Descending Mount Fuji
I’ve left the interested reader at about 3776m on top of Mount Fuji. For some reason, we thought it would be a great idea to descent a different route, the “Gotemba” route. Little did we know what we were in for…
The group had somewhat fragmented now – Burak was stuck in a hut half way up, Yusuke & Asae needed to return quickly and so went down the way we came up. So it was Love, Gizem, Zoli, and myself. So we embarked downwards. Pleasantly after the insanely busy push and shove on the way up, the path was comparably quiet, and people were friendly, giving us the old “Konnichiwa” or “Ohayoo”.
The way down.
And as it turned out we had very different descent speeds. Love would take the lead, then me, Gizem, and finally Zoli who was dealing with knee problems. This was fine, since there’d be a hut every 20 mins or so, and we’d stop and regroup. Lulled into false security, at station 5 we continued on individually thinking we were almost back (on the way up, station 5 was the last stop before the bus station).
But three things happened. The weather turned almost instantaneously from sunny to driving rain and being so high we were engulfed in cloud. So at points it was a total white-out. The second thing was that my battery in my phone had died, so any hope of contacting the others had gone. Very sensibly, I was the only one with everyone’s numbers. The final thing that happened as I descended is that it dawned on me I’d been going about 5 miles, without seeing a soul, soaked to the skin, and out of food and water. I’d also entered a volcanic scree field, which in a way was quite fun as you could safely run down at quite some speed. The big problem however, was that the scree wasn’t satisfied just being a surface you run on, it really like to be run in, and do to that it engulfed my previously white running shoes, under my feet, in my socks, and between my toes. The shoes will never be the same.
Left, up, and down. Where did everyone go?!
Eventually the rain died down a little, the fog lifted, and I could see the bus station, and civilization! I’d now be going about 10 miles since the last person I’d seen so was glad to see people walking down in the distance. But what particular bemused me was the people running up the scree! It seems to be some kind of masochistic sport that people engage in – running up hill through the rain in unforgiving scree. I had judged the bus station to be about another kilometre or so, but my optimism was somewhat ill founded. However, I did eventually make it and collapsed on a picnic table at the bottom, having probably walked/run/jumped/staggered about 20 miles from the top. “Jamie” Love called to my joy – so at least two of us had made it down. But where were Gizem and Zoli?
We sat about an hour drinking water, mushroom tea (yes – you can make tea from mushroom – and it was actually quite nice) and eating noodles and an incredible rate. All of a sudden, “Jamie-san?” said the waitress. I was somewhat surprised, given I’d never met her before, nor told her my name. “Denwa” she said – which means telephone. So I went inside to hear a somewhat downhearted Gizem, who’d been rescued by a kind Japanese family. Turns out there was a much quicker route down – we had just needed to turn right – and she’d taken it and was safely on the way back. But Zoli. Where was he. We waited and waited and waited. Eventually we supposed he must have also taken the other route, but had no way of contacting us. So off we went, to shower and relax in Hakone.
Turns out Zoli hadn’t in fact taken the other route, but did eventually make his leisurely way down and back home. All’s well that ends well.
