Mount Fuji

Even when the above photo was taken, I had not made up my mind to climb. Mount Fuji, on a clear late afternoon at the Fifth Station, did not look too daunting. Perhaps that swayed me. My partner said he would be climbing no matter what I ended up doing. That swayed me too. I strongly suspected I’d regret not giving it a go. At least.

At 2 AM I unpeeled from my futon. The absence of running water meant I could not attend to my normal waking rituals. I managed to brush my teeth, an achievement in the circumstances. I struggled into my clothes, locked away everything I would not need for the climb, and put everything else into my back pack.

At 3 AM we started. Even then I wasn’t committed to completing the climb. I decided to consider the challenges, one by one, when they confronted me, not before.

The ascent to the sixth station was easy. It got a bit steeper from there. At the lower reaches of the seventh station we paused to take in the sunrise.

By this time I had banished all thoughts of wimping out. At the eighth station I heard a man say that the climb from the eighth to the ninth station, the official summit, would take as long as the climb from fifth to eighth. We had taken four hours to reach the eighth. I refused to believe him. The last leg was the most arduous. Steep slopes and steep stairways, punctuated by scrambles up rocks. But the scenery was always glorious on a cool, sunny day above the clouds.

It took us 6.5 hours in all to reach the summit.

The descent is why I probably would not climb Mount Fuji again. it took us along a different route, a steep, zigzagging, soft gravel, slippery path, to which my timid disposition was most unsuited. In my mind, I risked life and limb with every step. Others, of obviously different dispositions, flew past me. I don’t want to do that again.