After a long break of not doing any mountain bike rides, I finally had a chance to check out an awesome trail network at Kakamino in Gifu Prefecture. Also known as 各務野自然遺産の森 (kakamino shizen-isan-no-mori) or かかみ野MTB (kakamino-mtb) for short.

One of the reasons I don’t ride my mountain bike very often is because there are not many decent trails nearby where I live in Japan. It’s mostly just steep dirt road climbs, but nothing that I would consider a real mtb trail, and anything that is halfway decent is quite far from where I live. Since I don’t have a car, it is a bit difficult and so I unfortunately don’t get to do much mtb riding currently.

Fortunately, my friend Junji started riding mtb recently and has a big car, so this might mean that there is more mountain biking ahead in my future 🙂

This trail is located in Gifu, but it’s right by Inuyama city, which is right on the border of Aichi prefecture, which is where I live. Although it’s only really about 40km away, it took us about 2 hours to get there due to tiny roads (traffic in Japan is not the best..). But it was well worth the wait, as these were by far the best trails that I’ve ridden in Japan so far.

I tried to include as much of the trail as possible in raw video, so hopefully it will serve as a reference for anyone interested in coming out here.

Here’s the website information. Be careful to not ride on areas that are not designated mountain bike course areas.
http://kakamigahara-kanko.jp/?p=228

Address: 6797-1 各務車洞 Kakamigahara, Gifu Prefecture 504-0102
Hours: 9-5 everyday

Overall, there are a little less than 10km of different trails that can be ridden in this area that are all well maintained and completely free to ride. Some are beginner friendly, while others are a bit more intermediate (mostly just tree roots and narrow paths). Another important thing is that there is a decent amount of elevation gain on this course which will leave you pretty tired by the end of your session.