Guest Post - Jeff Dickson and the Mount Fuji Experience

I'm so pleased to say my dear friend Jeff (who went to Japan with me in 2013) has written a guest post for Ashley's Wayfaring Ways. Near the end of our trip, we parted ways so I could scuba in the Aka Islands and Jeff could hike Mount Fuji to look at rocks and volcanoes and stuff. But I'll let him explain...

Climbing Mt. Fuji: An Idiot’s Perspective

One of the most unique ways to see a foreign country is through hiking, I’d discovered. I don’t know what exactly the bigger appeal is: seeing something completely off the beaten track, or trying to make up for all the food I’ve likely indulged in, but it is a fantastic activity to work into a trip, if possible. When Ashley and I started talking about visiting Japan, I instantly vowed to climb Mt. Fuji. What could be more quintessentially Japanese? 

In the process of my months of casual research and preparation, I continually stumbled upon a proverb that goes along the lines of, “A wise man climbs Mt. Fuji once. A fool climbs it twice.” This really just lulled me into a sense of security that I was indeed a wise man. Everything I read also unanimously stated that for the most authentic experience, you really should plan your climb to watch the sunrise from the summit (which poses the logistical problem of doing the actual hiking through the night). Now, I suppose I should clarify right away: this hike was hands-down, one of the highlights of my whole time in Japan. But in many ways it really summed up for me a lot of themes from the trip. Mainly how innocent misrepresentations or assumptions often lead to more significant problems. Or like how you can be surrounded by myriads of other people and still feel completely alone. Or how the guidebooks are right about it being really easy to do things in Japan as an independent traveller*.

*If you speak Japanese.

Okay, so a wiser person would probably have played this first part differently, but as somebody who tries to cram as much into his vacation as possible, that was really hard for me. I spent a full day exploring Tokyo on foot, knowing that the last bus destined for the trailhead left at 7:30pm. But because it was a Monday, lots of the things I wanted to see were actually closed, so I ended up walking significantly further during the day as I had intended to. So much for taking it easy. 

Then it came time to actually find the bus… something I had taken for granted would also be easy. But after half an hour of confusion in one of the largest metro stations in Tokyo, mild panic was setting in. After finally stumbling upon the bus terminal, I was left with less than 20 minutes to wolf down some ramen soup. My brilliant plan was to get all the sleep I would need on the two hour bus ride, which was easily thwarted by the chatty Californian sitting next to me. Not that it mattered; it seemed like we were at the trailhead shortly after I closed my eyes.

Everyone filed excitedly off the bus… and straight into the gift shop. Not particularly anxious to wait for the guy from California to resurface, it took a moment to figure out that the actual trailhead was unceremoniously hidden behind some other closed-up shops. Of course being a million degrees out, I was a sweaty mess in no time and cursing myself for all the walking I’d already done throughout the day. Only 1400 vertical metres to go.

For all the people milling about in the parking lot, I was completely alone on the trail, save for a solitary headlamp bobbing several hundred metres in front of me. Until hitting a signpost, I seriously questioned whether I was even on the trail. Eventually catching up to the hiker in front of me, he introduced himself as a student from China making his first attempt at Fuji-San. We continued along at a great pace until we hit the masses. And here’s where things became frustrating, because these were groups of dozens of hikers walking as slowly as they could, and taking up the entire width of the path. Every last one of them also made a concerted effort to shine their headlamps into my eyes as I awkwardly passed them, only to catch up to the next group in front of them. 

My view for five hours

So began a never ending game of leap-frog. The dilemma was simply that walking at their pace seemed painfully slow, and yet passing meant speeding up, and in no time I was making significant headway up the mountain. At set intervals, there were huts where you could get some exorbitantly priced soup or beverages or even lay down to rest for a bit inside. Looking up the mountain, you could see the lights of these stations punctuating the pitch darkness, and long switchbacks of tiny flashlights snaking their way in between. Each time I stopped to take a breather, I had to put all my layers back on to stave off the cold… my base layers and pants had completely soaked through long before the temperature plummeted. The down side to resting was that a freshly rested group would materialize out of the darkness around the huts to overtake me seconds before I could get back on the trail. 

It was around midnight when I realized how incredibly sleepy I was. After fighting it for a while, I ducked into a hut somewhere around the eighth station, hoping to get a quick nap and dry off from my own sweat (which was easily justified by the fact I was way ahead of schedule). It was no longer warm out. The guidebook described these huts as somewhat quaint chalets dotting the mountainside, but inside was essentially one gigantic dorm room crammed with a million other smelly people. I found a spot against a wall and passed out for all of ten minutes before the lights all came on, and the disgruntled innkeeper kicked everyone out. I think he was pissed at me for not paying to sleep there (although with everyone asleep when I arrived; there was no one to pay) so I bought a can of Coke for $5 out of appeasement. 

My will a little broken, I went back out into the cold and resigned myself to a snail’s pace behind the evicted hiking group. This was where it started to get scary, because I was plodding along, but totally falling asleep. Like some kind of zombie. I wouldn’t even know that I was sleeping until I’d start dreaming and wake up. How I didn’t fall back down the mountainside, I don’t know. Sometime around 3:30am, I noticed we were passing through the tori gate heralding the top. The crowds were insane already… how was there going to be room at the top for all the hundreds of people that I had passed? Would they even make it to the top? Either way, nothing really prepared me for how busy it was up there, especially considering I’d hiked the first half hour virtually alone.

I walked along the crater rim a ways until the crowds thinned, and curled up against a wall in the hopes of not becoming hypothermic before the sun rose – well over an hour away. It felt incredibly cold now, I was still very soaked, and had no more layers to put on. There was also nothing to actually see, except for the stars and the lights from the huts and people, it was still total darkness. It was then that a group of the friendliest students from Kyoto descended on me, excited to practice their English. It honestly turned the whole low-point in the night around. Suddenly we were laughing and they wanted to know all about me; I showed them my sketches, and they recognized some of the places I’d visited. Distracted from how frozen I was, we started to notice not only the sky lightening, but how perfectly situated we were to watch the sunrise. As dawn drew closer, I started to make out successive layers of clouds, far, far below us. The sun finally cut above the cloudline, and the sunrise was glorious. Everything was right in the world, and a quick glance over my shoulder told me we had the best vantage point on the entire mountain. I also realized that in all my reading, I had never actually seen a photograph of the summit itself. It was quite beautiful, surprisingly chromatic, and the rock nerd in me was having a blast.

I thawed out enough to scrawl out some postcards for the sake of novelty (there’s actually a post office on the far side of the crater) and pilfered a couple rocks from the top – don’t judge; I promptly received my karmatic comeuppance.

If my first mistake had been to exhaust myself prior to the hiking up, my second mistake was certainly to take an alternate route down. Now, in my defence, the hiking book waxed poetic about how fun it was to go bounding down a mountainside of volcanic sand, and this could only be done from one specific side of the mountain. And honestly, the thought of braving the same crowds all the way down the regular route sealed the deal. After descending for well over an hour, I finally made it to the sand slide. And the book was right: it was so much fun! Essentially, the sand was deep enough that you could launch yourself forward in bounding leaps and land calf-deep with each step. So I ran! And I ran. And… I ran. It just never ended. The initial elation of flying was quickly offset by fears that any unzipped contents of my pockets would never be seen again. And a near miss with some pointy ankle-breaking rocks peeking up from their hiding places in the sand was enough to sober me up. I stopped and took breaks, but it was actually way more difficult to try slogging through the sand than leaping over it. Far in the distance, I could make out what I thought to be the end… but then I’d pass through some clouds, and see it went further and further on. Eventually the talus got shallower, and as it transitioned to solid ground again, my legs turned to jelly after all the running.

The entire descent took somewhere around three hours, and when I arrived at the parking lot, there was a little rest area to collapse in. The parking lot was full of cars, but there were no people in sight until this kindly old woman appeared, baring a celebratory cup of tea! I happily took it, thanked her profusely, and then quickly realized that it was actually a salty fish broth. Sheepishly, I finished the cup, silently bemoaning the previous time I fell for this trick. Somewhere during all the tea drinking, my bus came and went. The view to the bus stop from where I was sitting, was obstructed by a washroom, as it turns out. The attendant cheerfully informed me that although I had just missed it, the next bus would be along in just another three hours. At this point, I became suddenly aware of the full weight of my twenty four sleepless hours. Quickly flipping open my book, I confirmed, like a crazy person, that I had read correctly: the bus ran every half hour. 

“No, no,” laughed the attendant, “that’s on other days.”  Clearly.

I also couldn’t help but note on my map that I was really and truly in the middle of nowhere. The attendant continued to politely laugh at my predicament, so I asked how far it was to the nearest bigger bus stop: 10km. 

Channelling my inner Will Ferguson, I set off to hitchhike back. It actually took ages just to reach the highway from the parking lot access road, and once there, the first car didn’t even pass me for another twenty minutes, by which time I looked pretty desperate and maniacal. Then another car came, and I vowed to play it cool, but wound up nearly falling into the ditch. Then it started to rain. I began cursing. Wildly. I had nearly exhausted my vocabulary when a van rounded the corner behind me. I stopped walking, stuck out my thumb, and gave my most sincere but-I’m-just-a-dumb-foreigner grin. The van cruised right on by. Suddenly it reappeared, reversing back around the bend in the road ahead. I ran up and greeted an older man through the window, his wife seated beside him, and then quickly realized I had no way of actually talking to them. I dumbly kept repeating the name of the nearest town, and the Japanese words for train station, and eventually his wife said something to him and he motioned for me to get in the back. I eagerly opened the door, nearly vaulting into the three young women that I hadn’t realized were back there. Eat your heart out, Mr. Ferguson. 

As one of them spoke some English, I was able to uncover that they were a trio of R&B singers travelling with their parents. It turns out, I was a long, long way from the train station, which out of kindness (and I’m sure out of their way) they took me to.  And don’t get me wrong, I was incredibly grateful, but what kind of parents pick up a smelly hitchhiker on a family vacation, and bid him to get in the back with their three daughters anyway?  

I’m certain had I been a bit wiser, my climb of Mt. Fuji would be nowhere near as memorable as it is.  My only real regret was not getting any contact details for the students from Kyoto and the kindly R&B troupe. I would have loved to email them my thanks for sharing their fantastic country with me. Until then, I’ll just have to pay it forward.