by Patrick Rial
There is a proverb in Japanese that goes something like this: If you climb Mt. Fuji once you have accomplished a great feat. If you climb Mt. Fuji more than once you are a hopeless fool.
After climbing Fuji this summer, I am inclined to agree. Even starting from the fifth stage, Fuji proved to be an admirable adversary. The trip began at midnight with my Japanese friend Yuuji and another friend visiting for the week from the US. The air was cool and heavy, but our spirits soared as we set out on our trek at the stroke of midnight.
My guidebook (damn you Lonely Planet!) advised that 4.5 hours would be sufficient to reach the summit. The plan was to ascend Fuji in just enough time to catch the sunrise from the summit. Little did I know what a foolish plan this was. Perhaps Sir Edmund Hillary on a healthy dose of PCP could have done it in four and a half hours, but this was not the case for our scraggly band of brothers.
Climbing at night can prove to be slightly difficult, what with the cold mountain air and frigid winds whipping across your back. However, the crowds are as thin as the air and trudging through the forests around the fifth stage brought an eerie sense of adventure to the trek.
This feeling quickly faded as around the seventh stage I lost most of the feeling in my hands, but was still able to grip my trusty walking stick, and so we pressed on. Yuuji, though the best equipped in terms of material things, was poorly equipped physically for the climb.
Climbing Mt. Fuji is no walk in the park. It is quite grueling as you come nearer and nearer to the peak. The gentle incline gives way to difficult, steep and narrow paths around three thousand meters. Yuuji's excess of baggage (including a kerosene grill, a change of clothes, at least 8 gallons of water, a sack of lead bricks, etc) began to weigh him down after the sixth stage and significantly slowed our progress.
We managed to miss the sunrise on the peak, in fact we missed it by almost four hours, but even so, from where we stood on the mountain we were still able to witness one of the most breathtaking sights that I have ever seen.
All in all it was an exhausting eight-hour climb to the summit, with another hour or so to reach the physical peak of the volcano on the other side of the crater. However, I can honestly say that the feeling of accomplishment was palatable. Our legs were ready to give way and we witnessed numerous climbers who never made it to the top of Fuji because of altitude sickness or exhaustion.
A can of Asahi Fuji-San Beer topped of the ultimate moment of our climb when we ascended the final peak and shouted out for the world to hear "Kampai!"
I don't think I will ever forget my climb of Fuji. Especially because the ten hours or so that were spent in daylight without any sunscreen on managed to give me the most exquisitely painful sunburn of my life. I was forced to wear gloves on my hands for the next week because I was afraid that if my hands received one more ray of sunlight they would simply fall off and then explode on the ground. The one benefit was that I could tell everyone I met that I was a hand model and therefore could never reveal my hands for fear of damaging their beauty. I know that Fuji will be with me forever. Even when I am old and gray, my skin cancer will be a constant reminder of my magnificent climb.
Fuji-san is kind and loyal, but she is also a jealous mistress, so treat her with respect. As for myself, I don't plan on playing with fire again. I'll take my kampais at sea level from now on.