Climbing Mount Fuji

Ignorant of time

Far above the drifting clouds

We climbed the mountain 

A few days before the summer solstice, I stood with a friend on the edge of a cliff late at night. We leaned on a fence hung with old buoys, staring at the mountains across Alaska's Cook Inlet. A stiff breeze whipped up whitecaps on the gray water and rattled the purple blossoms of nootka lupine growing all around us. The midnight sun, unseen behind thickening storm clouds, soaked the entire range in hazy pastels of peach and purple. Completely entranced, I stared and stared at the hulking volcanic cone of Mount Redoubt, illuminated by a soft shaft of storm light. My friend finally broke the silence. "Dude? What are you thinking about?" I blinked my eyes as if waking up and turned to him, smiling.

"Climbing Mount Fuji."

A bad picture of Mount Fuji, taken with a phone through the window of a moving bus

Yesterday I woke up in my tiny apartment near Tokyo at five in the morning. By six I was on a train headed downtown, caffeinated, completely stoked and jamming out to Dr. John (Locked Down! Amazing album!) I met Ian and Dave at the bus station and, after more caffeine, off we went. The frenetic buzz and bustle of Shinjuku soon faded to anonymous urban sprawl, which thankfully greened in stages until were in the countryside. We passed rice plots, steep, forested hillsides and crossed ravines thick with bamboo. Someone pointed out the bus window. Fuji! From so far away, snowy cap temporarily absent, it seemed somehow unimpressive, but as we neared the great mountain its magnetism was undeniable. It dwarfed everything around it. It filled the sky. The monstrous cone towered above the clouds.

The bus brought to the Kawaguchi-ko Fifth Station, and we hit the trail. The many trails to the summit are stung with 'stations', mountain huts for food and overnight accommodation. During the July and August climbing season, when more than 200,000 hikers swarm the mountain, the mountain is a beehive of activity. Most follow the time-honored tradition of arriving at the trailhead in the evening, climbing to a hut, spending a few hours 'sleeping' shoulder-to-shoulder, resuming the climb in the pre-dawn darkness and arriving at the summit to watch the sunrise. Outside of the official climbing season, the huts are closed and bus schedules are slashed to the bone. We went anyway.

Climbing past one of the closed stations with the summit a long way off

 Arriving mid-morning didn't leave us enough time to get up and down before the last bus left for the day. No problem, I assured Dave and Ian, I checked the internet and two of the huts were still open. As soon as we arrived, we were told in the friendliest possible terms that ALL huts were closed. At that point, determined to carry on, a form of group mentality known as 'somebody else will figure it out' took hold. We could call a taxi, no problem, we'd get back, whatever. . .

Fortified by Snickers bars and hard-boiled eggs, we started climbing the Yoshida Trail around 10:30. In the distance were mountain ridges, lakes and farmland, partially hidden by shifting clouds a thousand feet below. Above us, a few light clouds blew across a deep blue sky punctuated by that implacable black cone. Wide and smooth at first, the trail soon began to steepen, leaving a shrubby tree line populated by birch and pine. I was happy to meet an old friend from Alaska, as I found ragged-leafed alder growing along the trail. We climbed out of the trees and onto coarse, open slopes of uneven rock.

It's 1500 meters (5,000') from the K. Fifth Station to the summit at 3776 meters (12,389'.) Most of the ascending route is tough (there's a separate descending route), due to loose rock, overall steepness and altitude. Higher up the mountain, I started to take lots of shorts breaks to catch my breath and enjoy the view. Despite warnings of a typhoon on the way and an uncertain weather forecast, it was a beautiful day for a hike. Fuji towers above the surrounding countryside, and it felt like sitting with the gods on Mount Olympus, gazing down on the towns and farms of the mortal world. It was awesome.

The main benefit of climbing in the off season is peace and quiet. This was hardly marching with the hordes: we had the mountain to ourselves. Over the course of nine hours on the trail we ran into twenty or thirty people. Not bad on a mountain often described as an anthill! With every meeting we mustered up our best Konbanwa! and kept on moving. Where are you from? How do like Japan? Good luck! The Japanese are very friendly people, and I felt a genuine sincerity and warmth in these greetings. We were fellow wayfarers on Fuji-san, after all.

One of many trailside torii

 No, I don't know what was so funny. Must have been the altitude.

Up and up we went, and I started to feel the altitude. Despite constant hydration and periodic Snickers breaks I felt a slight headache coming on. Still, the epic views, good company and rhythmic crunch-crunch-crunch of my boots on the trail were more than enough to distract me from any earthly discomforts. Every little while we passed through torii, spiritual gates found throughout Japan at the entrances of Buddhist or Shinto shrines. Evidently I wasn't the only one picking up Fuji's divine vibes. We finally came within sight of the summit, with one last torii to go, guarded by a pair of granite lions. From there it was only a few more steps to the crater. Fuji last erupted in 1707 and, following the devastating earthquake off the coast of Tohoku in 2011, has shown signs of increased activity. But why dwell on doomsday scenarios? We exchanged high fives in the bitter wind, saluted the sky and headed back down.

The solitude afforded by a late September summit was incredible, but came not without problems. The final hour of our descent was in the dark, and although we had headlamps and the weather was fine, we arrived back at the Fifth Station to find it completely shut down. Hotel dark and silent, gift shops closed, information center shut. Luckily some strangers in a car, waiting for their friend, helped us organize a taxi. Aching and exhausted, we laid down on some benches nearby until the headlights of the taxi came swinging into the dark parking lot. We swerved and screeched (literally - the cabbie chirped the tires on a few corners) down the mountainside and into Kawaguchiko. 

Through deliberate ignorance we hadn't bothered to find out much about trains heading into Tokyo, and as the time dragged on I got an uneasy feeling. Due to the fact that I live in the Tokyo equivalent of 'the sticks' (actually an adjacent prefecture,) I had to travel from the southwest all the way into the downtown fray in order to catch another train northwest. There came a certain point when I realized I probably wouldn't make it. Hiking boots clomping across the platforms, I ran through a few stations until by a stroke of luck I found a train that would get me close to home. So I spent the midnight hour in a completely packed train car, a big awkward foreigner covered in caked sweat and volcanic dust, swaying in the midst of chattering teenagers and the ubiquitous dark suits. I counted myself lucky to make it back to my apartment at 1:30, after a $70 taxi ride and a dog-tired stagger through the dark lanes of my neighborhood. 

Fuji was worth it.