Sons of Loki

Mount Fuji (富士山) is a 3,776m stratovolcano, the highest point in Japan. On Thursday, we climbed it.
Download my Fuji .kmz for Google Earth

Jade and I awoke at 3:45am, after hardly any sleep, and cycled to Rob’s house bright and early to meet him and Kanako. Jade had borrowed Ella’s bike, and halfway there I was struck by the terrifying thought of being stopped by a cop and having to explain ourselves and missing the train and not getting to climb Fuji and everything going horribly wrong. Luckily, it didn’t happen. One of the TUFS security guards greeted us with a “good morning! It’s pretty early.”
“Yup,” I said. “We’re climbing Fuji today.”
“Ah. Take care.”


At Musashi-Koganei station, we met Tatsuya on a Takao-bound Chuo-line train. At Tachikawa we met Rei and Risako, and the Fellowship was duly assembled.

From left to right: Rob, Kanako, Risako, Tatsuya, Rei, Jade.

As the almost-empty train sped through the countryside to Otsuki, beautiful sunlight streamed through the windows. At Otsuki we changed to the Fujikyu express line, which was charmingly old-fashioned: you had to buy a ticket from an actual conductor on board the train! No IC cards out here.

Everyone else slept, but I found I couldn’t. The train drifted higher, until the land hit the sky and clouds started to stream around the mountains. I felt the anticipation when I spotted the summit of Fuji appear from a veil of clouds.

At Kawaguchiko, we changed to a bus headed for Kawaguchiko 5th Station, the trailhead for the Yoshida Trail and the beginning of our ascent…

Kawaguchiko 5th Station (2,305 metres above sea level)

At Kawaguchiko, we got off the bus and used the pay toilet. (Fuji is expensive, but for good reason. Everything past the fifth station has to be carried up by bulldozer – massive tracked machines that haul enormous crates of supplies up incredibly steep slopes. It’s remarkable that you can get anything up there at all.) We met a punkish-looking foreign guy who had climbed it the day before and come down in the morning after staying overnight. Fuji is full of foreigners, in fact – I head 30% of climbers are foreign, but it seemed more like 70% that day.

We thought about buying sticks (you can brand them with stamps at each station) but decided 1,200 yen for a length of wood was a bit of a rip-off. I did buy an orange Fuji jacket, both as a souvenir and because I didn’t have a proper rain jacket with me. The weather didn’t seem too bad, but I wanted to be prepared. And so we began,at about 8:50am.

The path from the 5th to the 6th station actually goes downhill for the first half, through a serene forest and across the volcanic ash slopes of Fuji. Very early on, we realised it was going to be quite an effort; but the views made it well worth it.

Thick cloud descended.

6th Station (2,390 metres above sea level)

There’s not a lot at the 6th Station, but we did see a big crew maintaining the trails with heavy construction equipment. It amazes me that people come up here to work every day. (I’m told the people who man the the higher stations sleep there overnight.)
Here there are a long series of switchbacks ascending 300m to the 7th station. It was pretty steep, and to make matters worse, I’d discovered a tear in one of my rucksack straps. I was terrified it would snap suddenly and send me hurtling off-balance and down the side of the mountain, so I wrapped a bungee cord around me and the bag.

7th Station (2,700 metres above sea level)

The 7th Station makes up the bulk of the climb, and basically consists of a string of buildings up the slopes of Fuji. At this point, I was feeling pretty good – I had a Red Bull going through my system, I’d eaten a Calorie Mate, and didn’t feel like the ever-decreasing oxygen was affecting me. It was 11:30am.

After a rest at the first part of the 7th Station, we started our ascent. And you can see from the photos that things started to get tough.

The scenery was incredible. I kept thinking of images from probes on the surface of Mars – red dust, an all-enveloping white fog, occasional ice fields. Sometimes, a view of distant Kawaguchiko would appear when the clouds cleared.

8th Station (3,100 metres above sea level)

We took a break here at about 12pm. I bought a 600 yen Cup Noodle, which was worth every penny, and Rob broke out the canned oxygen.

We were now as high as the clouds, and the sensation of floating on thin air was palpable – like Laputa, I heard someone saying.




Also, although I didn’t realise it until we got higher up, I had set my camera to RAW and forgotten to turn it off, so I now have about 800MB of photos from the trip. Oh well.
It was a little harder to breathe up here, like breathing through a paper bag. Kanako ran into an old friend by coincidence. For the final part of the climb, we were joined by these crazy Japanese guys who wore “I LOVE TAIWAN” shirts and straw hats and had hitchhiked here. They were a lot of fun, singing pop ballads as they climbed.

We headed out, with a little “Good luck!” from a climber resting behind us.

The curves were smooth only when seen from a distance. The people climbing them had learned that they were treacherous, jagged things — hot to the touch, often unstable — eager, should certain important rocks be disturbed, to tumble some more, to form lower, more solid curves.

Nobody talked much as the expedition crossed the moon. There was nothing appropriate to say. One thing was clear: Absolutely everybody in the city was supposed to be dead, regardless of what they were, and that anybody that moved in it represented a flaw in the design. There were to be no moon men at all.

Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut

At 14:20pm, we still have 325m to go to the summit. Descending climbers urge us on with a 「もうちょっと！もうちょっと！」 (“Just a little further!”) to which we reply 「がんばります！」 (“We’ll do our best!”). When we pause for breaks on the unending trail, it’s unnaturally quiet. Not a peep from the vast slopes around us, and when you hold your breath, it’s absolutely silent.
I try some of the ice. It’s delicious.



It’s tough, man.

On top of the clouds. It’s incredible.

At long last, we near the summit. Rob gets there before us.


At 15:38 we cross the gate together, and summit Mt Fuji.

Summit (3,776 metres above sea level)

The ascent has been such a endeavour that there’s not much to do but stand around, awed at the clouds. Plus, we’re about 40 minutes too late. We need to start heading down soon.




My biggest memory of the top is just staring at those clouds. It’s like looking out of the window of an airliner, except you’re standing on solid ground … the clouds are beneath you. It’s indescribable.

And then the crater itself is mindboggling, an enormous depression that has seen countless eruptions.

I shout “I” at the top of the world. I lie down on the gravel-covered ground, close my eyes, and bask in the sun. I am on top of Fuji. For a few minutes, I can afford to do nothing.

Then it’s time to go down.

Descent

Altitude sickness. It’s like a bad hangover, and then some.

The views are incredible.

But my ill-fitting climbing shoes have caused hellish blisters on my little toes, and every step pounds a jackhammer into my brain. I want to vomit. I want to lie down and die. I don’t understand why we have to get down before sunset, because I think I’m more likely to survive if I just fall down on the path. I stumble in a daze, unable to speak.

We passed an old man climbing up; he was shuffling up slowly, with two climbing sticks. He looked every bit like The End from MGS3: an old man, glasses, long beard, who has probably seen it all and then some. He spoke in a soft voice that was like finely matured whisky to the ears. And when I saw him shuffling up, I knew he’d overtake us. Slow and steady wins the race.

And indeed, on the way down, as we rested, the old man overtook us lazy youngsters. He was 74, he told us; he’d done the Himalayas two years ago, and climbed Fuji countless times. He looked every bit like a living fossil, and yet he was doing better than us.

The way down seemed to take forever. I found I could do it best if I half-fell, letting gravity take the brunt of the work. But oh, how it hurt, how exhausted I was, how every slope down caused me to gasp in agony. (Ironically, the upward climbs hurt a lot less.) I didn’t take photos, although the views were incredible as the sun set. I shut down all non-essential systems and followed everyone else to the bottom. I was dehydrated, had a pounding headache, blisters, and a bag that was ready to split at any moment … and somehow, I made it.

I don’t know when we reached the bottom. I stumbled into the shop at the bottom and bought some Aquarius to refresh myself, then slept for a very long time on the bus.