“Make great haste, everyone else is already here.”
Despite having left work two and a half hours earlier, I was still running late somehow. I threw my backpack onto my shoulders and started jogging through the rain. I arrived at the church fairly wet but excited to get this adventure underway. We were going to be doing a night hike up Mt. Fuji, something I’d wanted to do since the first time I came to Japan four years ago. After saying hello to my fellow mountaineers, I sat myself down in front of the fan to cool off. I wasn’t out of breath, but jogging for ten minutes in hiking boots with a full backpack was enough to work up a minor sweat at least.
“So are we leaving soon?”
“Well, we’re actually still waiting for five other people. I’m not really sure when they’re going to get here, but Josh is meeting his friends in Tokyo and then coming back here with them, so it’ll probably be a while still.”
‘Great haste,’ huh?
As it turned out, the organizer didn’t really want to hike up the mountain in the rain, so he was not overly bothered by the fact that Josh & Co.’s lateness would delay our departure by at least an hour, and proposed the possibility of getting something to eat at the base of the mountain, then taking a nap in the cars until the rain let up, and probably starting our hike around 3 or 4 A.M.
Now, I didn’t know about the rest of our intrepid crew – maybe they were there to do the climb to raise money for some earthquake orphans in Tibet – but I was there to see the sunrise from the tallest mountain in Japan, and starting our hike one or two hours before the sun came up did not seem very conducive to that plan. On the other hand, hiking in rain – even light rain – did not sound particularly enjoyable.
Fact: I am a bad planner, and will also occasionally straight up no-sir things for the most ridiculous reasons. The weather on Fuji can be capricious at best, and sudden rain storms are a frequent occurrence. Despite full knowledge of this fact, I still stubbornly insisted on not bringing rain gear, basically because rain gear looks absolutely idiotic – although who is going to see you at 4 A.M. in the pitch-black of the climb? And when you are shivering and crying about your lack of protection from the icy barrage, who looks like the idiot then? In any case, my reasoning was that the ski jacket I was bringing was waterproof, and that I would have a pair of UnderArmor pants beneath my jeans, so that would probably be enough to keep me relatively dry in the event of any water falling from the sky. Also I had been running in rain storms quite a bit recently, and was no longer nearly as bothered by being soaked through, although I did not really stop to consider this in the context of ‘Freezing cold Fuji summit temperatures’ vs. ‘Sweltering hot July Tokyo heat,’ so this was pretty terrible logic. Mostly though, I just think ponchos and rain coats look really stupid, and didn’t want to wear one. Additionally, I had no desire to be trapped under a non-breathable garbage bag during my hike in said sweltering hot Tokyo heat, although as it turns out, it does in fact get a tiny bit cooler 12,000 feet up. Who knew?
So I did not put up that much resistance to the proposed change in plans.
We spent the next hour doing ‘Get to know each other’ activities. I assume that the thought process behind this was that we would bond together and get into a ‘No man left behind’ mentality, but I had one goal, and one goal only. Anyone that fell behind was left to the wolves. Eventually, Josh showed up with his three lady friends, and I could tell at a glance that they weren’t going to survive. With high heels, purses, and no warm clothing to speak of, they’d be gone so fast that there wasn’t even a point in learning their names.
Look at me getting arrogant, when I’m the one that refused to bring rain gear.
When we arrived at Mt. Fuji (after stopping for dinner at a Gusto, fortunately) the rain had stopped, so we piled out of the cars and immediately threw on every piece of warm clothing we had. The fifth station, the most common starting point, is located around 3000 feet up, which is high enough to put a slight chill in the air. When everyone was ready, we began our ascent.
It was now somewhere between midnight and 1 A.M. The average climbing time is six to seven hours, but if you jog, you can make it in three. Sunrise would be between 4 and 4:30 A.M. This meant that we had a small chance at still achieving our goal. Sacrifices would have to be made, and lives might be lost, but it was possible.
At the first rest stop, a hard decision was made. It was already abundantly clear that the majority of our sixteen person team simply wasn’t pulling their weight, including our fearless leader. He had already shown that reaching the summit by sunrise was a secondary goal. If I left command of the expedition to him, there was no way we would be successful. A mutiny, however, was out of the question, as most of our crew was similarly lax about our objective. I therefore extended an offer: Join me, and untold riches could be yours. Or stay behind, and be content to languish in mediocrity forever. Only two were brave enough to answer my call.
We now began to make rapid progress, passing team after team of Japanese hikers, and I began to understand why Mt. Fuji was a ‘seven hour climb.’ If you stop every fifty meters for a rest and snack break, of course you’ll never get anywhere. Fuji already has multiple mountain huts as it is, established rest areas that serve food and drinks, and have bathrooms and places to lie down and sleep for a few hours, so if you combine the already painfully slow pace of your average Japanese person with the fact that they stop every two minutes (not an exaggeration), the seven hour estimate makes a lot more sense. We made good time initially, rapidly passing the first few stations, even jogging at a few points, but fatigue slowly wore us down, and we began to need mid-climb breaks to let our legs rest or to recharge on water and snacks.
Eventually, we came to the Lava Ridges. Here, the path wound across spikes of stone that jutted outward, makeshift steps leading up the mountain. Often these were two or more feet high, and I had to use my hands to scrabble and climb up each step, while the strong winds forced me to lean forward, close to the ground, to avoid the risk of being blown suddenly backwards to my death. Again, in my infinite wisdom, I had chosen to buy a hand flashlight rather than a headlamp. I was left in the tricky predicament of either being able to see what was in front of me, or being able to hold onto a rock to pull myself up, but not really able to do both at the same time. This probably caused the climbing to be more depleting than it normally would be, but I made it through the Ridges without incident.
Our stops at the mountain huts felt briefer and briefer, as we recovered less and less energy from each pause in ascent. Spurred on by the cold winds, we never remained still for very long, while the huts mocked us with names such as ‘Eighth Station,’ ‘Eighth Station,’ and ‘Eighth Station.’ A cruel joke, giving checkpoints the same names, forcing us to feel as though we were never making progress, and meaning that we never knew if we were actually nearing the end of our climb.
“Where there’s a whip, there’s a way.”
The refrain from the Orcish Death March in the animated version of ‘The Return of the King’ played in my mind as I forced myself to continue to move forward, one heavy step at a time. It seemed appropriate.
The first major obstacle presented to us stood out on the side of the mountain like an enormous glowing caterpillar – a Japanese tour group, consisting of around a hundred people wearing identical clear plastic ponchos and headlamps, spiraled unmoving up the path in front of us. As we drew nearer, we found that they were in fact not completely halted, they were just walking at a pace of approximately one step per minute. After a few moments contemplation, and despite the path only really being wide enough to admit 1.5 people, I decided that there was no way we could afford to be stopped behind them, and led my team up parallel to the caterpillar, hanging onto the guard chains as we climbed over the steeper rocks that did not make up the main path.
When we again reached the Eighth Station, I turned to look behind us, and the Glowworm still had not made any significant progress. Japanese people are Slow. We watched a couple take turns breathing from an oxygen tank before continuing on. Altitude sickness is a very real possibility at this height, but we laughed it off. How little we knew.
Upwards we trudged, bodies weary and leaden, when the Sickness began to take us. Our determination remained intact, but we began to forget why we were moving, and only knew that we had to continue forward. Somewhere between the Eighth Station and the Eighth Station, one of our number was lost. I didn’t know what happened to him, only that the Night had silently taken him away. We paused for a few moments waiting for him to appear, but our fading consciousnesses soon forgot why we had stopped and, eternally compelled, we resumed our march.
“March” is perhaps a misnomer. Any emotion, any song, any sense of rhythm even, had dissipated, leaving only shambling husks behind. We came upon another team of Japanese hikers and fell upon them, suddenly voracious, and devoured their brains, before continuing on. While the undead are not particularly agile and generally can be easily evaded, as I have already mentioned, the Japanese are a slow race, and their combat skills have decreased greatly in modern times. Mindlessly we dragged ourselves towards the next group of hikers, and they surely would have met the same fate as the previous team, had something not suddenly stopped us in our tracks.
The sun began to peek over the horizon. As the first rays of light hit us, we found ourselves returning to our former selves. Thought came flooding back, and we remembered why we were on this mountain, why we were walking this path of sorrows. To reach the summit, and cast the One Ring into the gaping maw of Mount Doom, and end the reign of terror that gripped the land. Or maybe it was to see a sunrise. And something about orphans. No matter. The important thing was that we had remembered our goal and, reinvigorated, we surged forward.
Well, we tried to surge forward, at least. The Japanese hikers that had climbed up the mountain the day before, and then spent the night resting in the various mountain huts, were now out en masse, and the narrow path leading to the summit was suddenly as crowded as Shinjuku station on a Saturday afternoon. The man in front of us turned to take a picture of, well, nothing. He then took two steps forward, turned, and took a second picture of nothing. Decision time.
We had come this far, and faced so many trials, there was no way that I was going to let this fool keep us from our goal when we were so close now. Politeness and courtesy be damned! Some might call this ‘cutting in line’ but the path was clearly large enough to admit at least two people shoulder to shoulder, so this ‘one at a time’ business made no sense to me, and off we went. We walked at a fairly quick pace, and the end came into sight at long last – and yet, people had completely stopped moving. Again I paused, and considered the situation. And then I saw something that enraged me. A woman was standing at the top of the path, right before the summit, posing for a picture. Once it was finished, she switched places with her boyfriend and took a picture of him. Then the next couple, politely waiting in line, moved up and repeated this process. Now, I understand that I can have a short temper sometimes, but when all these hundreds of people have climbed this mountain for hours, through cold rain and dark night, with the express purpose of reaching the summit in time to see the sunrise, the fact that people could be so selfish as to delay the entire line of hikers simply to take a picture, and that every single Japanese person was completely okay with this behavior, was appalling.
“Fuck that.”
Suddenly overflowing with adrenaline, we dashed forward, past the various waiting couples, around the posing Japanese girl, through the torii gate, and up onto the summit. We had made it! And with time to spare! We found a good location to watch the sunrise from, and a few minutes later it burst over the horizon.
I was actually so busy trying to take pictures with my camera and cell phone – with shivering hands – that I almost forgot to actually stop and look at the sunrise with my own eyes, but I did, and it was quite beautiful. Fuji itself is pretty ugly when you are actually on the mountain, since it’s all volcanic rock and ash, so the scenery is just dull browns and greys and reds, but looking out it gave you a very nice view of the surrounding area.
I might have been more touched by the scene if it had not been freezing, but as it was, after standing there for a few minutes and letting the sense of triumph sink in, I was ready to start moving again, preferably to somewhere away from the wind. As it turned out, such places did not exist, so we set out to explore the summit. This ended up being a terrible idea on my part, since there was no protection from the wind at all, and I took a few steps towards the crater before deciding that I didn’t want to be blown into it, and retreated back to where the main crowd was. By the time we got back, a hut selling warm drinks and soup had opened, and we huddled inside. A few minutes later, the third member of our team appeared – still alive! – and after an hour or so of waiting for other members to appear – they did not – we decided to head back down the mountain.
In the end, everyone arrived safely at the base of the mountain, some taking longer than others, but we had accomplished our goal (apparently it really was raising money for orphans, and climbing the mountain was just a means to an end).
