Japan day 9: Beauty and madness.
It took me over a month to post about this due to a mix of personal issues, laziness, and loss for words. Thinking back, I'm sure I overreacted then. I will try my best to describe what happened, given my tendency to forget things easily.
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Coming off from a high that was the previous day's Rock in Japan Fest, Lyn and I prepared to go back to Tokyo and then go on an overnight climb up Mt. Fuji.
After RIJF this was the activity that I looked forward to the most. In my mind, it would be awesome to reach the highest point in Japan. I was imagining how breath-taking the view would be. Of course, it was also going to be the most physical of all my activities, so I was worried that I might not be able to pull it off.
Although I am waaay far from being physically fit, I'm not a complete newbie as far as climbing is concerned. I started (and stopped) this when I was a college senior, and I guess in my need to relieve myself of some of the every day work stress I get, I recently started picking up on it again the past year and a half. I mostly go on day trips to 600-700 m climbs due to schedule constraints, but I was able to manage Luzon's highest peak. So when I started planning for my Japan trip, I immediately thought about Fuji. Still, the highest I've ever went is almost 900 meters below its 3776. I was planning on going alone, but when Lyn told me she wanted to go, we included it in our itinerary. I saved more reading material about it than any other activity I had lined up. However, we were unable to plan as carefully as we hoped we could. If I remember correctly, we almost gave up on it to settle on just Mt. Takao and the Fuji Five Lakes area, but I told Lyn to push on with it because I thought I might not have a second chance to go to Japan anymore.
We checked out of Toyoko Inn at around 10 AM and hopped on the train back to Shinjuku. We didn't book a room in Tokyo nor any sleeping space on one of the huts on the mountain trail. The plan was to reach Shinjuku by noon, go on the bus to Fuji 5th station, arrive late in the afternoon, and then start the ascent. I figured we would take our time and reach the top in time for the sunrise at around 3 or 4 AM, go around the crater for another hour an a half before the descent. From Fuji we will then go back to Shinjuku to change bags (and hopefully take a bath) before going on the overnight bus to Osaka. I didn't know then that my imagination was too ambitious.
We perused one of the Shinjuku station lockers upon arrival. We just brought the essentials for the climb, plus some drinking water and snacks bought from a nearby conbini. We purchased our tickets at the Shinjuku Keio Bus Terminal at around 1:30 PM and then had lunch (oyakodon for Lyn and tuna donburi for me) while waiting for the 3:30 PM bus departure. We reached the 5th station at around 5:30 PM.
I forgot how many times I've told Lyn how pretty the view is. I was all raves and excitement, and quite possibly, fear. I looked around and saw most of the people there all dressed and geared up seriously, and then I looked at myself in my light shirt, pants, and sandals, and thought I looked like I was half-assing the climb. The seeds of self-doubt have been planted.
We took some pictures around, bought some gloves and a couple of half-meter Fuji climbing sticks and we were all set. I forgot all about the stretching, forgot all about an early dinner, and second-guessed myself about buying an extra layer in case I get too cold. (I am never good with cold - my temper shoots up when I get cold - you can go ask my colleagues at work.)
It was already 7 PM but we still had light from the sky. We started the climb relatively strong. A few steep, flat uphills didn't hurt much. Lyn and I often switched places leading and following each other. While walking I was even telling Lyn about how I thought that the first 45 minutes of any climb is usually a bit tough because of the body and the legs adjusting to the sudden strain. Well, that has always been true in my case. Not on this one.
As we went up higher I realized I was considerably getting slower to the point where I could only walk a few feet then would ask to stop. The terrain also unceremoniously changed from something like the layer of sand, small rocks, and asphalt usually packed under the big slab of concrete during road improvements, into a wide-open trail with huge boulders, lots of big and small loose rocks, plus strong winds. No trees were in sight any more, and to give you an idea how strong the winds up there were, I'm 60 kg and I /still/ felt like I could be blown off the side of the mountain at any time. I also had to hide behind the rocks so I can grab on to something more solid whenever the wind would whistle past. I remember feeling like my legs and calves were burning, while Lyn looked like she was walking in a park (she was in jeans! haha) She was leading me more and more at that point, and I was starting to laugh at myself, because it looked like I was really weak. Maybe in my mind I was trying to justify what was happening - I thought then that the first week of walking every day finally caught up with me. I was hurting on the same places I've already hurt before (I am a serial leg muscle puller) plus I couldn't laugh about how fucking cold it was.
We reached the 8th station after almost 5 hours. I was tired and sleepy so I asked Lyn if we could just sit outside the mountain hut and sleep for a couple of hours. We laid down Lyn's raincoat on the ground to sit on. I sat with my legs criss-crossed, leaned my back against the hut wall, and hugged myself to sleep.
I woke up feeling more cold than earlier. I also felt that my knees were wet for some reason. When I finally came about completely, I saw Lyn had her umbrella open, shielding both of us from an awfully strong rain and (literally) howling wind.