Itinerary of a Mad-man

 

Itinerary of a Madman – August 2023

 

This was started in 2023 when Caroline, Sam and I decided to climb Mount Fuji. Its taken me a long time to get around to completing it, but I decided I couldn’t let it slide completely.

 

We’ve had a bit of fun over the last couple of weeks and are currently embarking on a bit more. Certainly enough fun that I thought it was worth recording, you know, for posterity and the like.

Way back in 2019, Sam went to Japan not to ski, but in summer with friends. One of the key things they did while they were there was climb Mount Fuji. It sounded like a fun adventure and for a while I’ve been envious of the exploit.

Sam and I were talking about it earlier this year after our ski trip and he suggested that if I really wanted to, climbing Fuji was achievable over a long weekend and that he’d be up for doing it again. Sounded pretty mad, but the seed had been planted and began to germinate and finally, took root.

The proposed itinerary looked something like:

Friday Night: Fly overnight from Sydney to Tokyo, landing about 5 or 6 am Saturday. Travel to what’s known as the fifth station (about 3 hours) and the starting point for climbing one of the Fuji trails. Climb to the seventh or 8^th station, where there are huts you can book and sleep in (about 3-4 hours of ‘climbing’. Sleep for a while, get up at about 2am and ascend the rest of the way to the summit in time for sunrise (3 hours or so). Watch the big ball of flame come up, then walk back down again (3-4 hours). Travel back to Tokyo and fly out on the overnight flight and arrive in Sydney about 9am Sunday morning.

Crazy right?

That’s what I thought.

We started to look into it though; with the key challenges being booking a hut during climbing season on a weekend that was going to work. Initially we were targeting August which put it in the middle of hockey season and so Caroline was going to stay home and play hockey. By the time everything came together though, It became an end of August affair and Caroline decided that if her team didn’t make finals, she’d come along as well.

By way of preparation we did, well, nothing special. Caroline played hockey and I spent the usual amount of time at the gym on the elliptical trainer. I mean, a week before the climb I spent half an hour on the stair climber, but other than assuring me that a continuous climb was going to be hard work, I wouldn’t say it exactly conditioned me.

The most significant adjustment I made to the planned itinerary was to stay an extra day in Tokyo. It just seemed to make sense to me that I spend Sunday enjoying Tokyo rather than getting home wiped out.

Now somewhere in the background of all this, we’ve been building a holiday house down at Marion Bay. It started just after COVID and has taken way longer than we would have liked. As luck would have it, the builder was pushing to hand over the keys and with a few things on, we had to get there and make it happen because we were booked to go to Europe as well.

After much discussion about when we could manage the three hour drive (each way) to Marion Bay to effect handover of the holiday house, we realised that the answer was obvious. Utter insanity.

The solution was:

Wednesday after work: Drive to Marion Bay. Sleep in a tent for the night.

Thursday – Property hand over at 7:30am, finish by 9am, drive back to Adelaide to catch a 2pm flight to Sydney so that we’d be there in time for a 9pm departure for Tokyo.

Friday: arrive in Tokyo, drop bags at a hotel, travel to Fuji, ascend to 8^th station. Sleep.

Saturday: Get up early, pray for good weather, ascend to summit, enjoy sunrise, walk back down. Sleep.

Sunday: Enjoy Tokyo, Travel home.

Monday. Work from Sydney then fly back to Adelaide.

Simples.

 

So with all that booked in, we set off on our little adventure.

After work Wednesday, we drove to Marion Bay and arrived at about 11pm. Fortunately, even though we weren’t supposed to have access to the house, access was organised for us, so rather than sleeping in a tent, we slept on inflatable mattresses on the floor. So after arrival, we completed a after a brief inspection, looking for any defects we could find ahead of taking the keys the following morning.

We woke early at about 6 or so and had another look around the house with the benefit of daylight. The builder’s supervisor was due to meet us at 7:30, but was late. Turned out he’d hit a roo on the way down and had had to travel significantly more slowly than he’d liked. It meant that we rushed around and marked up all the defects we could find, watching the minutes tick by, super-conscious of the fact we had a three hour drive back to Adelaide that we couldn’t shorten.

We managed to getaway pretty much on time and made it back without incident which on reflection was a good thing!

The travel to Sydney and Tokyo similarly went off without a hitch other than a lack of sleep. After only 6 hours Wednesday night, I still failed to sleep much on the plane, grabbing maybe 2 hours overnight.

We landed and made our way to Fuji via the hotel (Where I ticked off number 1of my Tokyo eats – 7/11 fried chicken, taking longer than we would have liked while Sam sorted out some SIM card issues so we’d have comms if we split up. It was a casual 35 degrees or so in Tokyo and at one of the stations we needed to change trains at, I looked across the track to the next platform and spied something I’d not quite managed to take advantage of during our last ski trip – an ice-cream vending machine. Quickly checking the time, there was sufficient for Sam and I to get across to that platform and procure ourselves some sweet frozen treats.

I’d been laughing with Sam on the train about an add for an ice-cream because it was called ‘Coolish’. I mean, if someone offers you an ice-cream, Coolish seems kind of underdone, doesn’t it? I for one would prefer my ice-cream really cold, frozen even, not just ‘coolish.’

Turns out Coolish was an option in this vending machine and Sam told me it was supposed to be a soft-serve. Well, I had to try that. Turns out it was delicious.

 

We arrived in Gotemba and had to wait for the bus that would take us up the last stage and had a quick look around, which unfortunately didn’t include visiting the distillery that was nearby. We bussed to the start of the Subashiri trail and procured our walking stick to get stamped along the way.

With that done, we started our ascent. As it was in Tokyo, it was hot at the start of the climb, which on our trail, started in the forest which, while keeping us out of the direct sunlight, made for muggy conditions.

After a bit of experimentation we worked out that it was best to let Caroline set the pace and we, along with most of the others we saw in the early stages, took plenty of breaks, which also provided opportunities to peer out through the trees at the view from ever increasing points of elevation. We walked and scrambled up the path made of volcanic rock. It was uneven and in parts involved some big step-ups through those first hours.

Eventually the vegetation thinned and we were treated to more frequent and ever improving views back toward Tokyo and out over the mountains.

It took us four hours to make it to the station we were staying the night at, and by the time we were there, the sun was definitely disappearing and the temperature was dropping.

The overnight accommodation was … well …, functional, rather than luxurious. They call it a hut but its more like a dorm room. The sleeping quarters were divided into ‘pods’ for want of a better word. Not high enough to stand up in but high enough that you didn’t quite have to go all the way onto hands and knees. There were mattresses and blankets, but unfortunately, continuing my love affair with Japanese sleeping arrangements, no pillows. Delightful.

When you climb Fuji its expected that you carry off all the rubbish associated with what you’ve taken with you and of course you have to carry everything the whole way, so pillows weren’t on the packing list. All I had was my windcheater to roll up and try and use. To say it was inadequate would be a gross understatement.

Before we embarked on sleep adventures though, we enjoyed the gourmet collection of food we’d opted to carry up for dinner. Eating was in an assigned order based on arrival time so we waited to be called to table before we enjoyed the fruits of our labours … apples, pringles and in my case, a lone whiskey highball can.

I think it was about 5:30pm when we arrived at the hut and there were already people bunked down for the night so there wasn’t an awful lot to do other than eat and sleep. So around 7:30 we bunked down and attempted to sleep, with a plan to get up to the summit for sunrise, which mean leaving about 2:30am.

Amazingly, between the light pollution from Tokyo and the fact we were climbing in the light of a super-moon, there were less stars visible than there are on a standard night in Adelaide.

I barely slept and about midnight was awake and listening to the noises of the hut which involved a lot of people getting up, sorting out their gear and heading out and up toward the summit. By 12:30, still not sleeping, I heard Sam and Caroline stir and so suggested that if none of us were sleeping we may as well be climbing. So it was agreed to set out. We gathered our things and sorted ourselves out in the near dark dressing warmer than we had the day before. After all, the temperature was in the single digits now!

We hiked and climbed for about an hour at which point Sam offered to take Caroline’s backpack. It evened his weight distribution a little and unburdened Caroline and we made a bit better progress as a result.

At least until we ran into the human traffic jam. Our trail joined the most popular route (the Yoshida trail) to the top above the 8^th station and we ended up in a literal queue.

Looking ahead of us, all you could see was a zig-zagging line of headlamps making their way up the mountain.

There were areas where you could walk two abreast and sometime even squeeze a third, but there were also portions of the trail where single file was all that could be managed. Had we stood patiently in that line and meandered our way up there’s no way we would have managed sunrise. We were able to weave in and out a bit and scramble up some of the rougher side paths and after three or four hours made it to the summit.

The sky was clear but it was also cold and windy. We found ourselves a vantage point in the lee of a boulder or two from which to watch the sun come up, and snuggled down to wait. Unfortunately that small collection of rocks proved to be less helpful than we would have liked when it came to blocking the wind. Sam, being Sam, was in shorts and we hadn’t brought too many warm clothes because of the weight factor.

It was bloody cold. By the time the sun was up I was about as cold as I’ve ever been, probably second only to a day in Canada when we got a flat tyre while it was like -35C. We held out until the sun was up, grabbed some photos and headed back toward the huts where they serve food and drink.

We all bought cans of hot green tea from the limited selection of beverages and grabbed some food as well. We sat holding those hot cans until they really weren’t providing any further warmth and finally drank them.

You can walk around the rim of the crater at the top of the volcano, but Sam needed to be back down the bottom to meet someone (which given the time passed since this was originally written we can now admit was/is his girlfriend) and Caroline and I decided we were cold enough that we’d begin our descent as well (though at perhaps a more leisurely rate). The lack of sleep and effort expended to get to the top meant we were wary of what was still required to get us to the bottom.

So off we went. You don’t descend the same path you ascend. The way down is a broad path of semi-loose volcanic rock that switches back and forth down the side of the volcano. Its wide enough that four or five people could walk abreast if they wanted to (and in come cases, did).

Caroline employed the zig-zag approach to making her way down each leg of the switch back and set something of a cracking pace for me to keep up with. We only stopped half a dozen or so times, mostly to clear stones from our hiking boots and occasionally to use the bathroom facilities (which are all compost toilets that you have to pay to use). And boy do you know when you’re near them!

As with the way up, there were all sorts of people on the way down and many different styles of getting there. The ones that got me the most though were those that were essentially running down. There weren’t many of them, but there was a couple.

We agreed on the way down that pending rose-coloured memories, we wouldn’t be rushing to climb Fuji again. A couple of weeks later with a little tinting in the glasses and with the legs recovered, I’d qualify that with ‘without a bit more appropriate preparation’.

We were so incredibly lucky with the weather (despite freezing our proverbials off) that its hard to imagine getting a better opportunity. But maybe with a bit more juice in the legs I would have at least circumnavigated the caldera. There’s certainly no intent to rush back to do so.

We descended back to a different point from where we’d started because it enabled us to catch a single bus back into Shinjuku in Tokyo. We had a bit of time and collected a couple of souvenirs before boarding the bus for the three hour tour back to Tokyo.

At the top of the mountain, we’d run into a couple of German ladies with whom we played the ‘we’ll take photos for you if you take photos for us’ game. They ended up on the same bus as us on the way back and we found out that we weren’t the only people with mad itineraries. They had flown in, ascended the mountain in a single climb and descended all without even sleeping on the mountain! Not only that but they were flying out the following day as well. I had the distinct impression they were a bit fitter and more accustomed to wandering up and down mountains than we were.

Three hours later we were back in Tokyo. We were last off the bus and collected the luggage that we’d have to take back to the hotel. It was only after we’d left the bus stop and started travelling back that Caroline asked me where the bag of souvenirs was.

It was about that time that I remembered looking at the very last plastic shopping bag in the bus’ luggage compartment and declaring it wasn’t ours. Caroline gave it a quick check and because I’d planted the seed, also decided it wasn’t ours. Only it was.

We weren’t leaving anything earth-shattering behind, but it was enough that it was at least worth making an enquiry about. We went to the hotel and attempted to make contact with the bus company through the front desk and a little electronic translator. After a couple of back and forth we were advised they had it and were given some instructions on how to get there. They weren’t great, but we were going to give it a go Sunday morning.

Caroline and I set out to find somewhere to have a nice Yakitori dinner. With the aid of Google maps and some very tired legs, we set out to find a restaurant. Now it turns out that we were in an area around Kawasaki that if you wandered too far from the main strip became just ever so slightly um … seedy. Certainly the young girl Caroline stopped to attempt to ask where the restaurant she was looking for didn’t seem to be there for that purpose! We did manage to track something down though and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The following morning was time to try and retrieve our souvenirs. The joy of having Sam and even more so on this occasion, his girlfriend, to assist us was that we actually managed to get back to the office of the bus company where the bag was being held. Iif we’d set out to find that place with the instructions we were given, there was a snowball’s chance in hell that we ever would have found it. We would simply have wasted the day.

It put a bit of time pressure on the day, but our only real plan was to hit up a yakiniku restaurant that Sam had found that delivered the meat to your table sushi-train style. Unfortunately when the time came there wasn’t availability at the restaurant. So we had to settle for a nice upmarket Yakiniku place instead though we avoided some of the more exotic cuts and stuck to what we enjoy. And then it was time to fly home.

It certainly was a whirlwind!