Hiking the top peak of Japan was a dream I had on standby for the past 3 years since I joined the mountain climbing group on Golds Gym Gotemba, where I started to live a physically active life. The fitness club was about to host a members event but unfortunately the person who was going to lead us, quit job, he was one of my trainers. Then, Tadashi and I spoke about doing it last year, but I couldn’t by then and it was finally this year that we could coordinate and go.
I met other people along this year and decided to organize a group adventure. I usually prefer to play it safe and my original plan was to spend the night before the hike at my cousins house in Numazu but, with a group, it would have had to be a hotel. But then everybody who was joining actually requested to reduce expenses and just travel from Nagoya on the same day of the hike. Japan is a very expensive country. I wanted to make everybody happy as much as I could so I side stepped from my preferential way of planning outdoors and excluded the day before rest at an inn.
We picked everybody up by wagon and set towards Shizuoka from early morning. Before reaching Gotemba, we could clearly see Fujisan from the South since we were moving from West to East by National route 1. Upon arrival, we bought lunch at Subway restaurant (sandwiches store, couldn’t have they picked a better name?). At Gotemba station, we took the bus to Subashiri 5th station, set up ready and started the climb at noon.
Since Fujisan became World Heritage, the government has been promoting and “upgrading” services around. Two of them were the ¥1.000 charity per person to “better” take care of the mountain and a GPS tracker system (like if somebody could actually get lost up there…mmhmmm). I don’t believe there’s any substantial difference for Fujisan hiking whether World Heritage or not. Fujisan has always been Fujisan, and I don’t see why being recognized by the rest of the World or not would make any difference for any Japanese. Not to mention that it has always been known around the globe anyways. This second new feature casted a powerful Wi-Fi umbrella over the entire mountain so that GPS signals would never lose contact at all. Which resulted in me being unable to connect my Garmin Virb XE action camera with my smartphone so that I could see how it was recording, primary focus angle so that my videos wouldnt be saved inclined. This was particularly upsetting to me because both devices were held with each hand side by side… How cannot I pair them at that range?
We begun our ascent and I took the back position while Tadashi took the front. Our team had non-regular hikers so I was worrying how things would turn and also very concern about myself because picking everybody up by wagon left me only 2 hours of sleep only, my highest hike was around 1.500 meters and this time I was carrying for the first time a 30L backpack, when I usually just climb with an 18L backpack.
We were very lucky to have a sunny day with only like 10% to 15% of clouds during the day and mild wind, just breezes. This weather was very favorable because we would get some shadow from time to time to refresh us during hot moments and also keep us warm in high altitude areas, despite the lower temperature, we never felt cold! So basically, I drop you an advise here, if you are going to spend the night at a hotel, you don’t really need much clothing, just a jacket will do.
At the moment I don’t really recall our passing by 6th station, somebody refresh my memory… Am I getting old? Oh, yes. We had lunch there and my sandwiches were already all smashed although I packed them at the top with little weight over them.
I do remember our status better by 7th station, and the distinction between fast and slow pace members. I had a sweet bread that had blue berries, it was quite big and certainly had enough carbohydrates.
From 7th (3.090 meters) to 8th station is where fun finally arrived. The green disappeared behind and volcanic rocks is all there was. I prefer green mountains because I love to breathe the fresh air. Particularly because my nose bone is big in relation to my nose cavities which it never let me distinguish cooking smells from afar since childhood, like most people can. Mountains, green mountains are one of the places where I can recall the fragrance of grass, leaves, trees and flowers where areas I can’t while in the city’s daily life. The combination of fresh air and excersice opens my nose cavities, and that’s the reason outdoors became one of my passions.
This was my first volcanic hike. Everything would be new for me from here onwards.
Everytime I hike with gym exclusive team members or just a hiking club group, I have the tendency to be at the back of the pack because I myself am slow. I am slim and tall and I could never touch my feet fingers while standing, I have bad flexibility.
However, I was faster this time than the non-regulars (obviously) and eventually remaining at the back position was hindering me too much that I had to break formation. I couldn’t wait for others anymore, my 2 hours only sleep deprivation was already kicking in and headache due to thin air at high altitude was felt too. We were behind schedule as hotels asks customers to arrive before 6pm, and night covered us in darkness. Took my headlight out. Also a first for me and that was quite a sight! I was so amazed and surprised to the point that I remained looking down where I was standing, looking at the rocks around my feet. I have a 160 lumens lens and once turned on, it instantly reminded me of the Discovery Channel documentaries. The light was so powerful that the rocks looked like if they were floating due to the absence of shadow. I never had that sight before! The visual perception of which rock is on top of the other becomes hard to distinguish and instead of looking at the ground I kept the focus a meter or two ahead, using only the outer peripheral light to see where I was stepping.
We kept communication between us using Messenger which was affected by the powerful WiFi causing delays of up to 40 minutes between a message being sent and delivered. I asked Tadashi to wait me outside of the Edoya Hotel as I was wandering if the banners would be visible to distinguish which was ours. Tadashi and Jimmy were the first two to arrive. My body’s temperature must have been very high by the time I arrived to the hotel because that’s where I had the hottest dump ever. I almost boiled the toilet’s water with my feces.
(from left to right: Me, Tadashi and Jimmy)
I think it’s normal symptom that when people get scared or nervous, they tend to dirt their pants. I have the opposite effect while I perform tough activities. Everytime I hike or cycle 250km on road bike, instead of going to the toilet, it’s like my body “holds-up” all until I reach destination and I think it’s because of this that once I arrived to the hotel, my stomach and the rest of the digestive system had no space for me to eat dinner. Neither I could have breakfast despite that meteor dump. This was worrying me a lot because the original plan was to reach the top of Fujisan before sunrise by continuing our hike from midnight. I was preoccupied about my energy storage without any intake.
Sleeping in a mountain hut was really uncomfortable, as each other’s sleeping bags were next to one another at close range. More annoying was all the snoring like a home theater surround system. Here’s another advise, take Earplugs.
I used to have the tendency to believe that entering a hotel would mean a good night rest. But at Fujisan, my condition became worst. I was hoping that my headache would go away and I rolled in all directions trying to find the sweet spot. This symptom due to lack of oxygen wouldn’t disappear. Later on I heard a hotel staff say, getting to the main hotel corridor or even outside would help recovery and this proved true after like an hour waiting outside. It happens that the air is even thinner inside the hotel and that explains why I couldn’t recover while sleeping inside.
The team was too tired to make it to the top before sunrise, so we decided to watch it from the front of our hotel instead at 8th station. The view was fun. I was commenting with the others how unrealistic are all the cartoon/anime representations of clouds which are often drawn flat. Clouds have all shapes, cubical, column like…
The Sun showed up, and since we were higher than the clouds it was an unusual sight to remember. You could see the Sun “below” the clouds. The clouds looked like metal being heated but from below. When I was a kid, I used to draw the clouds with blue pencil, but now if I’m gonna draw clouds again, I will take the orange pencil.
Before watching sunrise I was telling my partners that I was quitting going to the top due to the headache and was very frustrated I wouldn’t be able to accomplish what just common tourists can achieve and me a regular hiker…can’t! I couldn’t believe myself. Luckily, the headache disappeared after a long wait.
With the Sun on our backs, now we proceeded to reach the top. This was quite an effort for me since I didn’t had dinner nor breakfast. Well, I did “force” eat the salmon and some rice, but left everything else. I think I had the shumae as well but without shoyu. It took me countless stops but finally made it to the top and was totally surprised to see the large crowd roaming around. Of course, during the whole hike we could clearly see the lines of people going in both directions all the time, but still, really impressive. Soon, I also noticed the chilly wind, which had been absent all along until then.
I wasn’t hungry despite the fact that I had skipped 2 meals, but I didn’t want to end up running on fumes somewhere on the way back, so I decided to order food in one of the shops and try to eat something, as much as I could or I would faint. I managed to fully eat the shoyu ramen I paid for. In retrospective, it’s funny to think that I actually cared more about the food that taking at least a short glance of the crater first. It wasn’t Fujisan, it was ME first. Pure survival instinct I guess. After I was done with the bowl, I laid with my back on one of the shops columns to digest and rest. The team was scattered somewhere around and I was wandering where could the others be and what were they doing. Eventually Tadashi and Jimmy found me inside, I must say I was with my back towards the entrance and the chances of being spotted were few, but I was glad that they still saw me. It was around 2pm when we decided to go back down. Our original planning was to be already at Gotemba station by noon, so we were very behind schedule and we couldn’t do the Ohachi-mawari (お鉢巡り), the turn around the crater. We found Jeoyun sitting on a bench and we couldn’t spot Derek so I sent him a message through Messenger that we were descending.
The crater itself was interesting, as you could see the layers of soil by slices surrounding the borders, and considering the size of the mountain I also realize that it was different of what I used to imagine. In my mind, the idea of a crater was that if somebody would accidentally fall, we wouldn’t be able to see the person as he/she would be falling into some kind of abysm. There is no “hole” to the inner center of the volcano, like where the TV series “Airwolf” helicopter could land to hide (LOL). Instead it looks like the spot where a sand worm could come out.
The way down was fast. I had these gaiters I bought 3 years ago at the Gotemba Outlets for a discount price of 1000 yen which were just stored until this hiking, very thankful of that purchase. It’s like sliding on gravel all the path until the entrance. This was also new for me. Each step meant to bury your feet, the most difficult section was between 7th station and 5th station. Mostly because there’s no 6th station on the Subashiri return course. I had to do all that segment without water, and that was really hard. I did saw a connecting shortcut in direction to the ascending course`s 6th station but wasn’t really in the mood to go there and back just for water, I chose to keep going down. It felt good to re-encounter vegetation again almost near the end.
Cycling Ninja 