By Keith K. Daellenbach
Mount Fuji, about 60 miles west-southwest of Tokyo,is one of the world’s most beautiful mountains. Its distinctive, symmetrical stratovolcanic cone rises above nearby Suruga Bay on the western edge of the Pacific Ocean. The mountain is an important cultural symbol of Japan and is the object of national veneration and spiritual significance, having formed a basis for many legends, ukiyo-e woodblock prints, and haiku poetry.
I wanted to climb Mount Fuji since my first business trip to Japan 5 years ago, but the season and logistics foiled me. The Japanese culture and aesthetic fascinates me and I wanted to experience this remarkable country in a deeper way. On my third business trip to Japan in October 2011, I finally cracked the logistics code and climbed the tallest mountain in Japan. At 12,388 ft, Fujisan, as the mountain is known to Japanese, is slightly higher than Mt. Adams.
The official climbing season is July and August. Outside of these two summer months, the mountain is officially “closed” by prefecture authorities. I made an attempt anyway figuring I would have to be found, caught, and deported from the mountain. I was up for an adventure in whatever form it took. At this time
of year, most public transportation options between mountain villages and trailheads were scaled back or non-existent. A gate, closed nightly, blocked access to the Yoshida trailhead so I chose to ascend the Subashiri Trail. I considered renting a car to drive myself but an International Driver’s License was required which I did not possess. My strategy instead focused on taking rail, bus, subway, and one critical cab ride to get to and from the mountain.
At the end of 3 days working with my medical device design engineering team, I left them with bows and domo arigato (“thank you”) and was absorbed into the throng of evening commuters at the Noborito rail station heading out of one of the world’s most populated cities. The Odakyu rail line traveled west and, 23 stations later, I was at Shin-Matsuda where I transferred to the JR Gotenba line. Here, English translations from Japanese kanji letters drops to near zero and finding an English-speaker is improbable. I asked the train station attendant at the small Shin-Matsuda station, “Gotenba?”, and he pointed to a station on the rail map, six stations away. Carbo-loading on the rice, sushi, and tasty fresh tangerines I picked up in Noborito, I waited for my train on the platform in the dark. It arrived, I boarded, and I was off for Gotenba or at least I assumed so. I counted the station stops and disembarked onto the platform at the sixth stop. Outside the station, I found a local map displayed that had “Gotenba” in Roman letters. So far so good.
I now needed a cab to take me 22 kilometers to the trailhead at Subashiri 5th Station. Fortunately, there were several cabbies waiting outside the rail station. I made one of their nights by negotiating 8,200 ¥ (~$107) for the ride using my VISA. To communicate where I needed the well-dressed cabby to take me, I gave him a rough map of the mountain with “Take me to Subashiri 5th Station” written in kanji by one of the sales engineers back at our office, and the cabby supposedly understood. Soon, we busted out of Gotenba’s city limits and into the dark countryside. Partway there, we left the main highway and shot up a steep, windy road. At every hairpin, the cabby, who evidently fancied himself as something of a Japanese race-car driver, downshifted his column-side gear shift, popped the clutch, and shot ahead for the next curve. He mercifully slowed twice to view a few Sika deer in the headlights as they fed along the edge of the road; I was thrilled to see native wildlife.
We hurtled upward, stopping finally at a trailhead abandoned of vehicles. We were in a dense cloud and it was lightly raining. Even though we were unable to communicate, I could tell he was uneasy about dropping a foreigner off at night in the rain, alone. After paying him the final bill of 7,950 ¥ (~$103) in cash because my VISA ended up, for an unknown reason, being rejected by his credit card uplink, he gave me a card with what I presume was his cell number just in case I needed help. It was a thoughtful gesture, but I had no cell phone. I hopped out of the cab and started sorting gear by headlamp. The cabby waited a few minutes while I packed and eventually left after I waived goodbye to him with smiles.
The forecast was for thick clouds but my hope was that I would punch through at some point. The Subashiri Trail, one of four maintained paths up the mountain, starts in a deciduous and evergreen forest. The fog and light rain were like pea soup in my headlamp light but I was hopeful, given only a light breeze and temperatures in the low 40s. I continued to hope for improving conditions above. The trail was obvious, being rutted in sections. Being alone in Japan after the hustle and bustle of Tokyo (my hotel was adjacent to the Shinjuku subway station, the busiest in the world with more than 3.5 million passengers transferring each day), was a gift. About an hour after I started, at 12:30 a.m., I caught my first glimpse of stars! I was psyched, for the prospect of returning back to Gotenba because of inclement weather, by a long walk, was not appealing.
A couple hours brought me to the last island of deciduous trees at 8,575 ft. The bulk of the mountain before me started to become clear through the clouds and I recognized some stars, like the Big Dipper, in the Great Bear of constellation Ursa Major, which comforted me in this foreign land. The waning moon, a half disc, appeared and the lights of four nearby cities shone like a subterranean glow from beneath the clouds. This remote east side of the mountain had no other climber but me, as far as I could tell, and the mountain huts were all boarded up and ready for the snow to fly. At one point I stopped at a seemingly impromptu mountain shrine consisting of a small wooden Shinto tori gate, perhaps 2 ft tall, festooned with dozens of small bells. I said a prayer of thanksgiving for my good fortune and stowed one of the bells to be opened at Christmas nearly 5,000 miles away in Portland, Oregon by my six year old boy Micah.
For hours I slowly trudged up the path, which never became difficult. I had lightweight six-point crampons in my pack but never encountered snow. At any steep section, a switchback would appear out of the darkness cutting across the slope. The mountain’s grade was similar to Monitor Ridge on Mount Saint Helens. I thought, for a time, that the mountain’s summit may be hidden in a lenticular cloud but as I continued on, this appeared to not be the case as I could see stars all around the hulking peak. Above treeline, the path was bounded by a continuous rope on the lower slope strung between metal rods with red tape marking the Subashiri trail.
At 4:42 a.m., the first sign of twilight appeared and this never fails to lift my spirits. By then I was at the Shita-edoya trail junction adjacent to the route’s 8th Station (10,682 ft). It is at this junction that the Subashiri and Yoshida Trails (north side route) join, heading for the crater rim. I felt like I needed to make it at least to this junction to afford me a way off the mountain via the Yoshida Trail, in order to access public transportation starting at Kawaguchiko 5th Station. With good weather above me I continued my ascent. By sunrise, I was at just over 11,600 ft, just below the last and 9th Station, crossing under a tall Shinto tori gate over the trail, feeling strong.
The grade steepened to Class 2 and there were lava bombs scattered about. For the first time I came upon two other climbers, Americans from California, on descent. The sun was rising above a sea of clouds below me and I soon arrived at the crater rim. There are multiple structures on the crater’s edge, including shrines, mountain huts and even a post office. Most of these featured rocks built up to protect the structure’s walls. All were closed for the season. I made my way clockwise around to the crater’s west side and, at 7:30 a.m., to the highest point in Japan, Kengamine Peak, at 12,388 ft, nestled among small buildings apparently constructed for meteorological observation. It was warm with hardly any breeze so I shed a couple layers, donned a red rising sun hachimaki (head band), and waved my American flag for a solo celebration.
Leaving the summit, I continued my circumnavigation of the crater rim back to the east side. I heard an occasional loud booming noise that seemed to emanate southeast from the summit. At first, I thought “thunder” but the noise was monosyllabic and could not have been thunder. It sounded man-made and reminded me of the loud noises I sometimes hear while running trails in Forest Park emanating from the nearby shipyards on Swan Island. I must say, being all alone on a volcanic summit and not knowing the source of the noise, this was spooky. The mountain is surrounded by forest and the nearest city is miles away so the source of the noise remains a mystery to me.
My descent took me back to the Shita-edoya junction and I started down the yellow-marked Yoshida Trail to the north. The entire route is dotted with large earthwork constructions; some gabion-like structures were 30 ft high in an effort, I assume, to stabilize the slope. There was a 10 foot wide caterpillar track zigzagging up the slope which apparently supports the supply of the mountain huts and shelters and a slope stabilization program. Attempting to control the natural entropy of a volcano seemed futile to me. I passed the two Californians and also another American heading up but none were able to provide any usable intelligence on the location of the Kawaguchiko 5th Station, my climb’s terminal destination. My rudimentary maps downloaded from the internet were only a little better than back-of-envelope sketches and my sense was that somewhere around treeline, I had to take a trail dog-leg left or else suffer a full descent of the Yoshida Trail far down the mountain to a lonely and deserted forest trailhead.
I made my way nimbly down the well-used trail, often denuded of scree, and over some artificial steps and Class 2 rock all the while looking for the westward exit trail from the primary-trunk Yoshida Trail. My ascent had taken much of the night and I was glad I hit the summit shortly after sunrise because, as the morning wore on, the atmosphere heated up, the clouds lifted, and the summit was becoming obscured. I was greatly relieved to be well on my way down in this unfamiliar terrain. Getting lost on this peak in the clouds and wind, while doing a major traverse, would be a real mind-bender. At about tree-line I came upon an elderly Japanese couple and inquired about the location of the 5th Station trailhead and they courteously pointed west as a general direction. Like a traveler in an ancient Japanese scroll, I continued on my journey.
Eventually, down into the deciduous trees with colorful fall maple and golden larch foliage, I found a series of steps taking me left and onto a 25 ft wide path dotted with horse manure. I took this as a sign that I must be getting close as this likely came from horses taken out for tourist rambles from nearby stables. Later, I passed a large group of older Japanese decked out in hiking gear and trekking poles; I was now close. A little further and I arrived at the trail’s end, Kawaguchiko 5th Station, a 3-hour and 30-minute descent over a total climb distance of 8.2 miles. Less than an hour later I left the small mountain village and caught a bus down the mountain to Fujisan station, then onto Tokyo after a couple of railway transfers.
After being awake for a continuous 35 hours, I was back in Tokyo that afternoon. I was so thrilled about my ascent, I visited the Ota Kinen Bijutsukan (Ota Memorial Museum of Art) to see a beautiful display of ukiyo-e art. I left my climbing pack at the front desk and donned slippers to visit this intimate museum. I then wandered around on my last evening in Tokyo taking in the ebullient capital before returning to my hotel and collapsing that night. I figured I would catch up on sleep on the 10-hour flight home the next day.
Fuji-san has a beautiful symmetric aesthetic that is integral to the Japanese culture, and I was glad to finally have had a shot at reaching its summit. Off-season climbing has the benefit of no crowds which would likely diminish the experience of climbing this great mountain. The climb is relatively easy and the logistics are the climb’s crux. I can understand the complex and, at times, inscrutable Japanese a little better after having had the honor of standing atop Japan’s most beloved mountain to admire the view.
