So, this TR started with a thunder. Not the thunder of a powder board down a steep powder slope, but with the thunder that fell on Kagura gondola main building and fried the control panel.
I was there with a friend from Friday night, stayed at the luxurious mycar hotel and was up and steamed to start hiking from 6:00 am. The lift boxes opened up at 7:15 as usual and was waiting in line to get the covetable ticket to heaven. And then suddenly a whisper started propagating from the top of the line and when it made it to the back a new thunder torn the blue mitsumata sky “due to a thunder that fell last night the kagura gondola is not working yet, we are sorry for the inconvenience we will try our best to have it up running the soonest possible”.
From what they were saying, all the lifts were scheduled to operate as usually with the exception of the gondola that would take a little wile till they deal with the burned fuse problem. So ok we said, till we go to tashiro area and approach kagura from there it will be well after 9 and most probably they will have changed the fuse on the panel and the gondola would be back on line by then. So we went up at mitsumata area and waited till they fix it.
And waited....
And waited.....
And waited.......
But till 10:30 they still hadnt fixed it and I was getting reports on the radio that people that went up from tashiro were already at the top of kagura and were getting ready to hike up to the top.
So the time had come for brave decisions, we are hiking up the gondola course to the main kagura area!

tsondaboy getting ready for the enormous feat


betty getting ready


tsondaboy braking path


betty taking turns in path braking


Happy at the top of the mountain, getting ready to shred it!

This place looks awfully familiar. Isn’t that in the back the kagura #2 lift?

A map of the area.
The discretely highlighted area represents our root up.


Should I change the title of this thread to “TR- dumb and dumber @ kagura”?

That looked pretty trecherous - I hope you had full avi gear with you

大変ですね

You must be tired!

Please repost with bigger photos!

That looks like it was some adventure. Well done

a long long time ago, the original yama-ski route at kagura started from the bottom of the mitsumata parking lot. it continued up along the gondola course to Wadagoya-Lodge. That was day 1.

Day 2 you'd climb what we now call the main gerende course at Kagura, then up to Kagura-Mine or Gangamine.

the yama-skiers back then were tough, they didn't need luxuries such as ropeways, lifts, etc

any clues as to how long ago that was Montoya?

I noticed a few pretty ancient looking pictures on the wall at wadagoya on sunday that made me wonder how long it`s been there...

SJA, yes of course, full gear and beacon on wile hiking up.

montoya when was that? or to put it in an other way, when was the ropeway built?

After Wadagoya-lodge was created and before the Kagura ski-resort was created (I don't know the years). The guy running Wadagoya is pretty friendly, he'll tell you all about the history if you ask. It's also an interesting experience to stay there overnight, apparently its haunted by a few ghosts.

Anyway, tsondaboy is on his way, but needs to complete the first and last stages also if he's going to call himself yama-skier-tough.

Haunted by ghosts...

Sounds more interesting than sleeping in the car!

Good effort Tsonda. Must actually have been really an interesting feeling to hike up the slopes with nobody on them. I assume there was no music on as well?! Hiking up is fun!

There was music...

Of course there was music! I hope they gave you a good variety of quality jpop, aor and 80s western pop.

By the way SJ#1, the patrol guy that took us the pick in front of the kagura#2 was asking me if we were your friends and said that you were with him on Friday. Sorry, forgot his name.

That will be Mr Watanabe, probably.

Yes Mr Watanabe.

You should have seen his face when I replied that SJ#1 owes me money and if you see him again tell him that I am going to kill the F*** Bast***. :p

I will be careful to avoid him then in future

awesome TR tsonda

next time, include a toque shot in it