(no subject)
So, I climbed Mount Fuji on the weekend. I've been home for about 36 hours and I'm still tired, and still in pain. But at least I no longer feel like I'm on the brink of serious illness, and at least I'm not cold.
Mount Fuji is only open for climbing for about 2 months of the year, because the rest of the year there's too much snow and the conditions are far too severe for ordinary schmucks like me to tackle it. It's true: little old ladies do climb Fuji. I saw a whole gaggle of them at the top of the mountain -- a tour group of some kind, it seemed, all probalby in their mid-60s. I have to say, though, that I don't know how they did it. Many people say that Mount Fuji is more of a "long walk uphill" than it is a hike -- that, my friends, is an outright LIE.
The mountain is 3,776 metres high. There are 10 stations up the mountain, the 10th station being the summit. Most people start climbing from one of several 5th stations -- we climbed from the most popular one, the Lake Kawaguchiko route in Yamanashi prefecture. (That's a rather amusing trait of climbing Fuji -- when you descend, you have to make sure you take the same path that you took on the way up, or you could end up MILES and MILES from where you started. Like, the difference between taking a bus to get back to Tokyo for Y2600, or taking a shinkansen for Y20,000). That particular 5th uphill station was at 2305m above sea level.
I went with two friends: Lindsay, and Chad. I actually didn't know Chad all that well before the hike, but we got to know each other pretty well through this whole expedition. We actually waffled a little over whether to go this weekend, because the weather forecast was less than stellar -- 30% chance of rain in Yamanashi on Sunday, and 80% on Monday. We decided to rough it, because a 30% chance isn't all THAT high, and we'd really only be on the mountain for the very first hours of Monday, so what were the odds that we'd get that whole 80% chance in the first few hours of the day? Plus, I'd hiked in the rain before, as had Chad, and it hadn't been that bad. How bad could it be, we thought?
Famous last words, of course, but I haven't gotten there yet. We caught a bus from Shinjuku at 4:50 pm, which brought us to the 5th station at around 7:00 pm. We paused to go to the bathroom, triple-check our supplies (water, power bars, gloves, extra socks, hats, etc) and then we hit the trail at around 7:30. These hours may seem strange, so let me clarify the Fuji tradition: what you're supposed to do is start in the evening and hike through the night to watch the sunrise from the summit the next morning. There are several mountain huts along the hike, and many people hike partway one evening, reserve a space in a hut for the night, sleep there, and then hike up the rest of the way. We, being cocky punks, decided that we could do it without reserving the sleeping space.
So, yeah. We got to the 5th station, and it was cold and rainy. Pretty crappy conditions, to be honest, but there was no turning back at that point. We checked our supplies, and decided to split the cost of a can of oxygen (it weighed nothing, so we figured it was better to have and not need, than to need and not have, especially when we were going to an altitude where 75% of people felt the effects of the altitude at least somewhat, and about 10% felt them severely enough that they were incapable of making it to the summit). It ended up being a worthwhile investment, actually.
So at around 7:30 pm we started climbing, thinking we'd make frequent stops to rest along the way to keep ourselves from getting exhausted, and to increase our chance of all making it to the top. I should note that the hike usually takes about 5 hours of climbing time from the 5th station. That's for people who stop to sleep part way, so we assumed that it'd take a bit longer for us, doing it straight.
The initial part of the trail is, oddly downhill. That threw us off a bit. But the angle picked up about 10 minutes down the line, and before we knew it we were passing the 6th station (very close to the 5th.) Immediately from there, the trail began to progress more steadily upward in a series of quick switchbacks. The 6th station basically marked the treeline, too -- after that, it was all volcanic ash, pebbles, and rock. It doesn't take long after passing the 6th station to see the additional benefit of climbing at night: you have to use a flashlight and to pay active attention to where you're putting your feet, because it's pitch black up there. Were there not that small amount of intellectual engagement involved, that stretch would be more boring than slug races on TV. At that point, Chad, Lindsay and I had already picked up some hiking buddies -- a couple named Ronnie and Chris; Chris was working for the military, and Ronnie was teaching English on the base. They were a really odd couple -- Chris was this tall, thin, slightly dorky, chatty guy, and Ronnie was shorter, kind of artsy-tomboy-ish, with an absolutely KILLER 'fro. Seriously, I haven't seen hair like that since the 70's, and since I wasn't alive in the 70's, that's definitely a feat. They were really interesting people to talk to -- they'd travelled and lived all over the world, and Chris, especially, had some interesting accounts of hiking in Italy. The five of us cruised slowly uphill, chatting and keeping ourselves entertained that way, which was happily distracting us with our rapidly-saturating clothing.
As we approached the 7th station, however, the terrain slowly became rougher. I had a flashlight with a clip on the back which I'd spotted, by coincidence, at a 100Y shop a few days earlier; the lid of the battery case kept on popping off and spitting the batteries out onto the rocks, so I was a constant annoyance to everyone as I had to stop, steal someone else's flashlight, find the batteries to MY flashlight, and put it back together before we could keep going (later, I gave my 100Y flashlight -- battery-case taped shut -- to Chris, who hadn't brought one, and I climbed the rest of the way using my mini maglite, which I'd also brought along). The clip was convenient, though, because it kept my hands free, and starting from the lowest part of the 7th station, we had to actually use our hands to clamber up, over, and around the rocks. There was no longer a soft dirt-and-pebble trail.
Sidenote: a strange thing about the stations. I had assumed, and everything I'd read had led me to believe, that each "station" was at a particular level, with large, empty spaces between each station and several huts clustered together at each station level. This is not at all the case. Rather, there are various huts spread roughly evenly between the 7th station and the summit. We'd be walking along and pass a hut that said "7th station," and we'd keep going and hit another hut 20 minutes up the mountain that was also "7th station," on and on for about 4 or 5 huts, and then suddenly the next hut was the "8th station." And the 8th station was almost endless. It just kept going and going and going -- what I learned was that there's actually an old and a new 8th station (the old one was something like 500 metres higher than the new) and there was no 9th station that I noticed. Just 8th, 8th, 8th, 8th, and then suddenly 10th -- the summit. Go figure.
It was during the hand-over-hand climbing that most of us started to feel the muscle burn and the tiredness setting in. All five of us stopped in one of the 7th-station huts to warm up and have a cup-o-noodle (best cup-o-noodle I've ever had -- as it well should have been, for Y400). We talked about Shakespeare, Sherlock HOlmes, and our various experiences as foreigners in Japan. Then we kept hiking, our hands all starting to get cold because our hands were soaked not only from the rain, but from constantly being used to stabilize us against cold, wet rocks. When we reached the first 8th station hut, Chad, Linds and I parted ways with Ronnie and Chris, who decided to stop there to get a few hours' sleep before continuing on. But when a few hours' sleep on a dirty futon with dirty blankets in an unheated hut runs you Y5000 a head -- well, the three of us decided to keep walking.
And it was a good thing we did. A few huts later, we decided it was time to try for another rest stop. We were stopped outside the hut (still an 8th-station hut, and probably the most upscale of the lot, actually) when the door was opened by a young-ish guy working there, who spoke to us in nearly impeccable English and asked us if we were okay. We asked him if we could come in to rest and warm up for a bit, and he said that no, unfortunately, we could only come in to sleep. We didn't want to stop to sleep, though, so we thanked him and told him we'd keep walking. He told us that if we wanted, he could certainly sell us a hot chocolate or or something for the road, and we thanked him, but said that it wasn't really worth it if we couldn't sit somewhere warm to drink it. He nodded, and paused for a moment, thinking. Then he told us that his boss was sleeping inside on one of the bunks, so as long as we were very quiet and careful not to wake him, he'd let us come in to rest and warm up so long as we all bought something to eat or drink. We agreed, and went inside.
I'll continue my account tomorrow, as I really am tired and need to get to sleep. . . as you can tell, anyway, it's a long story, so anyone actually interested in reading will want to read it in parts.
Mount Fuji is only open for climbing for about 2 months of the year, because the rest of the year there's too much snow and the conditions are far too severe for ordinary schmucks like me to tackle it. It's true: little old ladies do climb Fuji. I saw a whole gaggle of them at the top of the mountain -- a tour group of some kind, it seemed, all probalby in their mid-60s. I have to say, though, that I don't know how they did it. Many people say that Mount Fuji is more of a "long walk uphill" than it is a hike -- that, my friends, is an outright LIE.
The mountain is 3,776 metres high. There are 10 stations up the mountain, the 10th station being the summit. Most people start climbing from one of several 5th stations -- we climbed from the most popular one, the Lake Kawaguchiko route in Yamanashi prefecture. (That's a rather amusing trait of climbing Fuji -- when you descend, you have to make sure you take the same path that you took on the way up, or you could end up MILES and MILES from where you started. Like, the difference between taking a bus to get back to Tokyo for Y2600, or taking a shinkansen for Y20,000). That particular 5th uphill station was at 2305m above sea level.
I went with two friends: Lindsay, and Chad. I actually didn't know Chad all that well before the hike, but we got to know each other pretty well through this whole expedition. We actually waffled a little over whether to go this weekend, because the weather forecast was less than stellar -- 30% chance of rain in Yamanashi on Sunday, and 80% on Monday. We decided to rough it, because a 30% chance isn't all THAT high, and we'd really only be on the mountain for the very first hours of Monday, so what were the odds that we'd get that whole 80% chance in the first few hours of the day? Plus, I'd hiked in the rain before, as had Chad, and it hadn't been that bad. How bad could it be, we thought?
Famous last words, of course, but I haven't gotten there yet. We caught a bus from Shinjuku at 4:50 pm, which brought us to the 5th station at around 7:00 pm. We paused to go to the bathroom, triple-check our supplies (water, power bars, gloves, extra socks, hats, etc) and then we hit the trail at around 7:30. These hours may seem strange, so let me clarify the Fuji tradition: what you're supposed to do is start in the evening and hike through the night to watch the sunrise from the summit the next morning. There are several mountain huts along the hike, and many people hike partway one evening, reserve a space in a hut for the night, sleep there, and then hike up the rest of the way. We, being cocky punks, decided that we could do it without reserving the sleeping space.
So, yeah. We got to the 5th station, and it was cold and rainy. Pretty crappy conditions, to be honest, but there was no turning back at that point. We checked our supplies, and decided to split the cost of a can of oxygen (it weighed nothing, so we figured it was better to have and not need, than to need and not have, especially when we were going to an altitude where 75% of people felt the effects of the altitude at least somewhat, and about 10% felt them severely enough that they were incapable of making it to the summit). It ended up being a worthwhile investment, actually.
So at around 7:30 pm we started climbing, thinking we'd make frequent stops to rest along the way to keep ourselves from getting exhausted, and to increase our chance of all making it to the top. I should note that the hike usually takes about 5 hours of climbing time from the 5th station. That's for people who stop to sleep part way, so we assumed that it'd take a bit longer for us, doing it straight.
The initial part of the trail is, oddly downhill. That threw us off a bit. But the angle picked up about 10 minutes down the line, and before we knew it we were passing the 6th station (very close to the 5th.) Immediately from there, the trail began to progress more steadily upward in a series of quick switchbacks. The 6th station basically marked the treeline, too -- after that, it was all volcanic ash, pebbles, and rock. It doesn't take long after passing the 6th station to see the additional benefit of climbing at night: you have to use a flashlight and to pay active attention to where you're putting your feet, because it's pitch black up there. Were there not that small amount of intellectual engagement involved, that stretch would be more boring than slug races on TV. At that point, Chad, Lindsay and I had already picked up some hiking buddies -- a couple named Ronnie and Chris; Chris was working for the military, and Ronnie was teaching English on the base. They were a really odd couple -- Chris was this tall, thin, slightly dorky, chatty guy, and Ronnie was shorter, kind of artsy-tomboy-ish, with an absolutely KILLER 'fro. Seriously, I haven't seen hair like that since the 70's, and since I wasn't alive in the 70's, that's definitely a feat. They were really interesting people to talk to -- they'd travelled and lived all over the world, and Chris, especially, had some interesting accounts of hiking in Italy. The five of us cruised slowly uphill, chatting and keeping ourselves entertained that way, which was happily distracting us with our rapidly-saturating clothing.
As we approached the 7th station, however, the terrain slowly became rougher. I had a flashlight with a clip on the back which I'd spotted, by coincidence, at a 100Y shop a few days earlier; the lid of the battery case kept on popping off and spitting the batteries out onto the rocks, so I was a constant annoyance to everyone as I had to stop, steal someone else's flashlight, find the batteries to MY flashlight, and put it back together before we could keep going (later, I gave my 100Y flashlight -- battery-case taped shut -- to Chris, who hadn't brought one, and I climbed the rest of the way using my mini maglite, which I'd also brought along). The clip was convenient, though, because it kept my hands free, and starting from the lowest part of the 7th station, we had to actually use our hands to clamber up, over, and around the rocks. There was no longer a soft dirt-and-pebble trail.
Sidenote: a strange thing about the stations. I had assumed, and everything I'd read had led me to believe, that each "station" was at a particular level, with large, empty spaces between each station and several huts clustered together at each station level. This is not at all the case. Rather, there are various huts spread roughly evenly between the 7th station and the summit. We'd be walking along and pass a hut that said "7th station," and we'd keep going and hit another hut 20 minutes up the mountain that was also "7th station," on and on for about 4 or 5 huts, and then suddenly the next hut was the "8th station." And the 8th station was almost endless. It just kept going and going and going -- what I learned was that there's actually an old and a new 8th station (the old one was something like 500 metres higher than the new) and there was no 9th station that I noticed. Just 8th, 8th, 8th, 8th, and then suddenly 10th -- the summit. Go figure.
It was during the hand-over-hand climbing that most of us started to feel the muscle burn and the tiredness setting in. All five of us stopped in one of the 7th-station huts to warm up and have a cup-o-noodle (best cup-o-noodle I've ever had -- as it well should have been, for Y400). We talked about Shakespeare, Sherlock HOlmes, and our various experiences as foreigners in Japan. Then we kept hiking, our hands all starting to get cold because our hands were soaked not only from the rain, but from constantly being used to stabilize us against cold, wet rocks. When we reached the first 8th station hut, Chad, Linds and I parted ways with Ronnie and Chris, who decided to stop there to get a few hours' sleep before continuing on. But when a few hours' sleep on a dirty futon with dirty blankets in an unheated hut runs you Y5000 a head -- well, the three of us decided to keep walking.
And it was a good thing we did. A few huts later, we decided it was time to try for another rest stop. We were stopped outside the hut (still an 8th-station hut, and probably the most upscale of the lot, actually) when the door was opened by a young-ish guy working there, who spoke to us in nearly impeccable English and asked us if we were okay. We asked him if we could come in to rest and warm up for a bit, and he said that no, unfortunately, we could only come in to sleep. We didn't want to stop to sleep, though, so we thanked him and told him we'd keep walking. He told us that if we wanted, he could certainly sell us a hot chocolate or or something for the road, and we thanked him, but said that it wasn't really worth it if we couldn't sit somewhere warm to drink it. He nodded, and paused for a moment, thinking. Then he told us that his boss was sleeping inside on one of the bunks, so as long as we were very quiet and careful not to wake him, he'd let us come in to rest and warm up so long as we all bought something to eat or drink. We agreed, and went inside.
I'll continue my account tomorrow, as I really am tired and need to get to sleep. . . as you can tell, anyway, it's a long story, so anyone actually interested in reading will want to read it in parts.