Peg, Nick and Nick’s friend Derek set out yesterday morning
from Kyoto for Mount Fuji. Preparations included assembling and sharing all the
warm clothes that we had. A trip to the hundred yen store helped out with extra
rain gear, batteries for the flashlights, and as recommended by the guidebook,
a small towel for each of us. We also accumulated a number of ¥100 coins, as
suggested, for the pay toilets. The outfitting process also including finding a
replacement backpack for Derek -- his backpack blew out earlier on the trip.
We took a taxi to the station, and the Shinkansen (bullet
train) to Shin-Fuji. A very helpful
person at the information desk got us onto the right bus for the Fujinomiya
trailhead. Kyoto is at an elevation of
near sea level, and the bus took us to the 5th station at an elevation of 2,400
meters. The bus stopped for about 10
min. at a shrine on the way up so that we could pray for a successful ascent of
Mount Fuji.
We started hiking at a little before 2 PM with the goal of
reaching the 8th station, where we had a reservation for the night, by 6 PM for
dinner. Clearly Nick and Derek hiked faster than I did, but they waited at each
of the stations for me to catch up. This is not a wilderness experience. As far
as the eye can see in all directions is volcanic rubble, with a very few
flowering plants. There are lots of other hikers taking the same route, so we
were constantly greeting and greeted by people coming down, “Konichi-wa.”
6th station 2,490 meters
new 7th station 2,780 meters
old 7th station 3,010 meters
8th station 3,250 meters
top 3,776 meters
The map actually gives the times traveling between the
stations instead of distances because the distances are so deceptively short. We stayed fairly close to the time estimates,
even with me walking somewhat deliberately.
I was following along with the family with 3 children, one
of them are girl quite young, so I asked how old she was. Dad indicated that
she was 7, and the other 2 kids were about 10 and 12. Dad added that he was 44. This family had a guide, and we saw other
guided groups. We also saw quite a few
other children, with families, with one parent, or with one grandparent. And we saw a school group of about 125 middle
school girls, attended to by about 5 adults.
Mostly we saw young adults, but there were certainly elderly people too.
The estimated time between the old 7th station and the 8th
station was listed as 40 minutes. But I
was clearly lagging on this leg. It wasn't until I was fully at the 8th station
that I realized that I was experiencing a mild level of altitude sickness. This
feels approximately like a combination of the flu, morning sickness, and car
sickness, but without the fever. Dinner was served at the station, but I was
only deep able to eat a couple bites of white rice. Derek and Nick were pleased to help eat the
rest of my dinner. I was trying to
figure out what to eat when I remembered the value of crackers in morning
sickness, so I bought Ritz crackers. The sports drink Aquarius that I had
carried up, and Ritz crackers got me through till morning, when I was feeling
quite a bit better. I felt better
sitting up, so slept part of the night sitting up – I have had a lot of
practice sleeping sitting up in semi-darkened rooms with Power Point
presentations and on economy flights.
For sleeping accommodations, we climbed up a ladder to a
space for the 3 of us that was about the size of a queen bed. Walls of about 15 inches height separated us from the
other groups. There was a very thin
mattress on the bottom and 2 thick quilts for the top. Very cozy. And not terribly sanitary. There was room to sit up, and for the people
below us to sit up. There were hooks for hanging the backpacks, but once the
backpacks were hung, it was hard to sit up.
They explained to us that there would be to wake up calls at
2 AM and 4:30 AM. The 2 AM wake-up call was for people like Nick and Derek who
were going to climb to the top to watch the sunrise from the top of Mount Fuji.
The 4:30 wake-up call was for those of us who were going to watch the sun rise
from station 8.
Needless to say everyone went right to sleep after dinner.
In fact, most people were asleep before 8 o'clock lights out. I looked outside a couple of times in the
night, and you could see dots of light from people's headlamps as they were
climbing Fuji at night.
Nick and Derek made to the top, with about 20 cold minutes
to spare before the time for the sun to come up. Unfortunately the top was in
the clouds. They did walk by some patches of snow. Because the clouds were
close in and visibility was low, they did not walk all the way around the
caldera before descending. We met up at station 8 and ascended more or less
together. Because it was now morning,
“Ohio Gozaimasu” was the greeting.
The whole thing felt like a cultural experience. Most of the
hikers were Japanese, many were carrying wooden hiking sticks that they had
branded, ¥100, at each of the stations as they went up. We saw the towels tied on people’s backpack,
draped around their neck to keep off the sun, and tied around their heads.
Not surprisingly, we slept most of the bus trip down to the
station, and train trip back to Kyoto. Seems incredible that we did so much in
so little time. People suggested that it
was disappointing that it was cloudy, but the clouds were visually interesting,
and with only intermittent sun, we did not need to worry about sunburn. We felt very fortunate that we did not have
the harsh rainy windy weather that can come to Mount Fuji, even this time of
year.
No comments:
Post a Comment