Japan Trip 2012, Day 3 - Mount Fuji (Climb)
Well, I suppose it's time to finish writing this. If you just want to see the pictures, they're on my public album site.
http://caelk.shutterfly.com/pictures/185
Those of you who've read my past posts probably saw a good number of long posts detailing all my warnings/advice on what everyone needs to climb Mount Fuji. I imagine many of you might be thinking I'm over-reacting, or wondering what in the world caused me to think about things this way.
Well, let's start out at Subashiri 5th Station. As I've stated before, this is the highest you can get with a car or bus, and stands at around 2000 meters above sea level - you have 1776 meters to climb. For reference, the Empire State Building is 381 meters tall, so you've got a little more than four and a half of those to climb.
When you arrive, prepare to be assaulted by the local vendor (or vendors, there are exactly two) with small gifts of soup, I suppose as a way of making you feel obligated to buy something at their store. Well, we partook in the broth and my two climbing buddies decided to buy walking sticks here - probably the one thing you can buy at Mount Fuji and not have wasted too much money. It was only after my buddies did this that they said that we could use the restrooms for free - normally on Mount Fuji, there's a 200 yen charge to use them, but I think they waived it seeing as we gave them a good chunk of money. Me personally, I just got some hot cocoa from their vending machine.
We hung out for around a half hour getting acclimated to the altitude - I think we probably should have spent 45 minutes to an hour, but sitting around a shop whose owners actively promoted their wares wasn't exactly on my priority list, and I think we were getting a little bored doing nothing but sitting around, so we were off at around 15:00. An informational sign at the start of the path said it was five and a half hours to the summit station (not the actual summit), though I'm assuming that's if you don't really rest that much. Past this, you'll see a stone staircase, not very steep, that leads up to a shrine - and it's here that marks the real starting point to the trail. Once you're past the shrine, the paved road stops, and you're on nothing but dirt paths.
The main selling point of the Subashiri Trail is the fact that the first part of the ascent is through a forest (as opposed to the Yoshida Trail, which is just a dirt path and a big rock) - pretty scenic stuff here, and if you like hiking, you'll probably be right at home assuming you can get used to the fact that you're constantly going up a hill. We ended up taking a lot of pictures and likely too much rest, and ended up getting to the next station at around 16:40 - nearly double the time the aforementioned info board said it would take us.
The thing about this trip which we probably should have realized sooner, was that we knew that the Subashiri Trail was closed past 7th Station. Everyone we had talked to said that we could totally ignore that fact and walk up the trail regardless, which seemed to indicate that while it would be a little rough, it wasn't anything bad. However, I do recall a conversation we had with a hut owner at Main 6th Station - he was busy watching some climbers descend on the Subashiri descending route (which is different from the ascending route) when we arrived and expressed his worry for them. Apparently, a typhoon had come in a few days past and wiped out a good chunk of the descending trail, upon which it was closed. What remained was a steep... very steep run straight down the mountain, making it easier to lose footing and tumble off the side of it. His worry didn't stop there though - as the path was closed and possibly dangerous, there would be no help, or at least no timely help, for these people if something happened, not even from emergency workers. He recommended that we skip out on the descending trail and just take the same trail we climbed to go back down.
To be perfectly honest, this is probably where we should have started to put a few things together - the descending trail was closed because it had gotten obliterated. Why was the ascending trail closed as well? The answer is pretty obvious when stated like this - it was because parts of it had also gotten obliterated. The hut owner didn't warn us of anything on the ascending trail, even going so far as to recommend which route to take on our descent (presumably from the summit), so I guess we didn't think that anything too bad could be wrong with it. And in truth, perhaps nothing was... provided it was daytime in good weather and you could see where you were going.
But we were vastly behind schedule... or rather, maybe our schedule wasn't that great to begin with. We expected to be at Main 8th Station at 20:00 or 21:00, which was still a little slower than the estimates we gathered online, and we planned to rest there until 2:00 and then set off for the summit and get there at 3:30. Unfortunately, this wasn't even close to happening.
At around 19:25, we set off from 7th Station, three stations away from our lodgings, to go to Main 7th Station - as we left, we were immediately greeted with a sign right in the center of the path that said the trail was closed from here until Main 8th. We ignored it, like everyone said we could, and caught the sunset on the path at around 19:35.
The darkness finally closed in on the way, and when we made it to Main 7th at 20:30, it was night. The hut at Main 7th was actually open despite the path being closed, and above us we saw two well-lit spots on trail that could only have been 8th and Main 8th Station. I thought for a bit that I should call Mount Fuji Hotel to tell them we'd be late, but they didn't pick up. Regardless, with our stop only two stations away and the estimated time of arrival in two hours at our pace, we did an equipment check before heading on. Headlamps and flashlights were out, every last piece of winter clothing was now being worn. I took down a rice ball and we all had some drink, and after a short rest, we started our climb. Past this point, I put my camera away and ceased taking pictures in order to make as much time as possible.
I actually didn't notice it so much at this point, but one of my two friends who were with me was struggling on the climb at this point - we all were to an extent, but he was getting pretty bad and it totally past over my head. At about this time, it started becoming obvious why the trail was closed here, as the convenient trail markers had the habit of disappearing every so often, leaving a stretch of unmarked path in front of us. While I walked a little ahead of my friends and called back trail conditions when I could, sometimes it wasn't clear which way the trail went. One time I started climbing up the side of the mountain until a friend corrected me with the right way to go.
To make matters worse, about halfway to 8th Station, we hit fog. Not soon after, we hit rain flurries. The night grew colder, visibility was only a few meters in front of us, and we were on a trail that disappeared for stretches at a time. I was thinking when we made it to 8th Station, we could rest there instead. No hut on the way was close to being fully occupied, so it would be easy to find a vacancy and call up Mount Fuji Hotel to say we wouldn't be making it.
We arrived at 8th Station in about the same condition I thought we'd be in - exhausted, and ready to stop for a night. Unfortunately, 8th Station wasn't in the condition any of us thought it would be in when we arrived. The lights we saw earlier clearly marking the station were now off. The hut was boarded up, and there wasn't a soul to be found. 8th Station was closed.
I gave a brief but honest thought to kicking down the door, but as can be expected, I concluded it would be a bad idea. Maybe some people would have thought about turning back at this point to stop at Main 7th, as a descent uses up less energy than ascending, and we were about out of stamina at this point. However, I thought this was a bad idea as well - it's easy to see the path end in a cliff when ascending, but it can be harder to see when descending, especially with the fog killing your visibility, and especially if you're descending at a half-jog because the trail is that steep. Another option was to stay the night on the side of the mountain... in the rain and cold, the latter of which would definitely stick around in the morning. Not a good idea at all.
It was two and a half hours until midnight - night had fully descended. Visibility of five meters at best, temperature near freezing, rain flurries, unignorable exhaustion... but no place to rest, and likely no help from even emergency numbers. We had no choice - our safest decision was to climb.
The next hour we spent forcing ourselves to walk what path remained - trail markers would line the path then disappear, leaving us to try to find the path in the foggy black. Sections of the trail were obviously run over by a bulldozer, with the intent of reconstructing the trail at some point, but in a state where the grade was still steep. And twice on the way, we encountered clear forks in the road. With no visibility, there was no telling where any of them went - whether they'd join some place up top, or if one path would end not having been touched by reconstruction efforts. In these situations, we just had to guess and hope we were still the correct path.
The last stretch was up a steep bulldozer path, which had plowed through a section of snow that left tall, frigid walls of white to either side. This was probably the most energy-intensive part of the entire climb. We could see the lights at Main 8th, yet we were up a dirt slope reminiscent of those staircases you see in haunted houses whose steps flip around to become an annoying slide... except this slide was probably about as tall as two or three of those entire houses stacked on top of each other.
The parked bulldozer at the end provided some very welcome handholds, and one actual staircase later, we found ourselves at the back entrance of Main 8th Station. It was around 22:40. Our lodgings, or rather their completely unlocked back door, just happened to be right in front of us, and we were almost ready to just walk in unannounced and unnoticed to go to sleep, when we peered down another staircase. The hut's proper entrance was around the corner there, and we all went and checked in. Thankfully we had reserved with a dinner included, which consisted of cheap curry with two cheap hot dog sausages and a cheap hamburger patty, served on a bed of rice with ginger garnish and a half-liter bottle of water.
After about an hour of resting and eating, we were shown the sleeping space - more or less a floor sectioned off into a left and a right side, each with ladders to a bunked section on top the floor. Accommodations were a pillow and a sleeping bag, and we were put right next to each other regardless of the fact that the place was not full at all. They asked us what our plans were for the sunrise, and at this point we changed them from sunrise at the summit to sunrise right here at Main 8th Station - the staff would provide wake-up service for us at around 4:00 so we could see the sunrise at 4:30. With a warm spot to rest, and with warm blankets and pillows, we set ourselves down in a heap, and promptly fell asleep. It was around 23:45.
Perhaps some of you might remember what I wrote about preparation for the climb, though. I wrote about getting clothes that keep you dry, and a change of clothes. You also might remember me saying that even vomit in a bag goes down the mountain with you. For those of you who are thinking of climbing Mount Fuji on a whim without preparing beforehand, this anecdote is for you. I woke up about an hour after we'd settled in to the sickly sound of somebody vomiting. For some reason, the first time I heard it, I thought it came from below me, but I was able to put things together the second time I heard it. One of our companions was pushing himself more than was healthy during the climb, and he had no appetite when dinner was put in front of him. I also believe his clothes were wet, and he slept with them on.
I shot up at this time, and asked if it was him. He asked for a bag, and the response he got was the sound of me going through my backpack as fast as I could to empty a bag and hand it to him. Even a full night's rest didn't see him fully recovered, and he had troubles on the descent as well, so I want to stress this. Please, please, please, if you want to climb Mount Fuji, do your homework first. Use Google. Use my previous posts. Mount Fuji is touristy, yes, but it can and will beat you down if you don't take the time to prepare for it. I especially want to point out that if something had happened to us from Main 7th, I don't think we would have been able to get help. What if one of us collapsed? What if one of us twisted an ankle? What if one of us slipped on some snow and off the side of the mountain? With the night covered in the fog, it's entirely likely that any sort of help would not have come until morning - that's six or seven hours of waiting, and none of us could have done anything in the meantime.
In fact, about halfway from Main 7th, it dawned on me that we needed to have paced ourselves better. Naturally when things get dangerous, most people think that you should slow down. Yes, pushing yourself too hard will tire you out faster and rest will stop helping you, and you could get a little careless in your haste. However, I came under the realization that going too slow was also dangerous. As an extreme example, we could have waited out the night on the path, which would be slowing down to the point of not moving, but can you imagine staying eight hours in freezing temperatures and rain, only to be greeted with a morning that's not much warmer? Thing is, I could - the longer we stayed on the path without food or a place to rest, the more we were at risk to running out of strength and just falling over. We had to make it to our lodgings, or any lodgings, before this happened... because if something happened to any one of us, the rest would have had to wait out the night, or abandon a friend.
We had gotten ourselves in a bad situation without realizing it. My friend's struggles went completely over my head until we were in a spot where no help could have come for us. None of us were really aware why the trail had been closed or what the ramifications of that would be, though admittedly that information just wasn't getting to us when we blatantly asked. There was a two hour stretch of climb that could have turned out really bad, but thankfully, we're all around to tell the tale. Hopefully, someone out there won't end up going through what we did.
For all the trouble we encountered though (most due to weather), the Subashiri Trail is really nice aesthetically. Assuming that the entire trail is in good repair, I'd really recommend it over the Yoshida trail. It's not as everybody-friendly, since there's not as many mountain huts you can rest and buy supplies at on the Subashiri Trail, though the lower population means you won't have to deal with a swarm of people on the way like the Yoshida Trail. We could literally count the number of other groups we met on the trail on one hand, and we pretty much had the entire trail to ourselves during the climb. I only posted a few pictures of the path above, but if you're interested in more, you can find them at my public album site.
