Climbing Mt. Fuji, Part 3 - The Descent

As it turns out, getting down the mountain was way more difficult than getting up it. We expected it to take about two to two-and-a-half hours - it ended up being a solid three-and-a-half. To be fair, we were very tired starting off, but the path down was significantly harder than I expected it to be. It started off with a series of switchbacks, covered with very rough, broken rocks. It could hardly even be called a path; several of us slipped and fell several times, and there were a few slightly twisted ankles.

Then the joggers came. About an hour into our climb down, we were passed by a guy in a windshirt and running shorts jogging UP the mountain. He was breathing hard, but he wasn't slowing down. This was clearly something he did frequently. There wasn't a gram of fat on his body, and his calves were nothing but muscle. We respectfully stood to the side and let him pass. Over the course of the climb we passed about ten more guys racing up the side of the mountain. About an hour later, they began passing us coming DOWN the mountain. I promise you, you've never done a morning jog like this. I later found out about some Navy guys who are going to do the mountain circuit four times in a single day for charity.

About halfway down the mountain, at the final rest stop, the path changed completely. It went from the rough switchbacks to a steady downward slope of what I guess is called lava ash. It's difficult to describe: it was like a very thick bed of fine gravel. When you stepped on it, your foot would sink down several inches. Since it had a decent slope to it, your momentum would actually drive your foot several inches down into the gravel. The easiest and quickest way to navigate it was to let yourself kind of fall foward, then let your heel act as a shock absorber as it planted itself into the gravel. There were only two problems with this method: it caused my heel to slip inside my shoe with every step (resulting in two enormous blisters) and it worked over my calf muscles like they've never been worked over before. More on those two in the next post.

The ash flow was so bizarre. I ended up on my own, walking down this slope that seemed to go on forever. A mist had blown in, so I couldn't see more than a few hundred feet in any direction. All that I could see were grey rocks and then a wall of mist all around me. I was completely alone and the fog had dampened any sound but the wind and my feet crunching in the ash. One of my co-climbers later said it felt like being in a sensory deprivation tank. Either way, it felt a long way from home. I eventually pulled out my PSP and started playing some podcasts just to get my mind off the freakiness of the surroundings.

This path went on and on and on. There were markers every few hundred feet but just as I would pass one another one would appear through the mist in the distance. Due to the fog, I couldn't see the bottom of the mountain so there was no way of knowing how much further I had to walk. Since I couldn't see the sun, had it not been for my watch I'd have had no idea how long I'd been walking. As it turns out, I wasn't on the path as long as I felt like I was. In retrospect, it feels like it was an eternity, but it was actually only a couple of hours.

One of the things I remember most was just wanting to stop. I just wanted to sit down and not get back up. But there was no other option but to get up and keep walking. No one was going to carry me - the only way I was ever going to get back to the hotel was to keep trudging through the ash.

I'd drunk the last of my water as I left the previous station, thinking it was only another 30 or 45 minutes to the last station. As I walked on and the ash dust dried out my throat, I got more and more thirsty. Once I finally made it to the rest stop at the bottom, I ended up drinking four bottles of water before I started to feel better again.

Getting to the bottom of the mountain was only part of the journey. Once we'd all gathered together (I was the last one to make it down), we started to walk (!) towards the bus station. We hadn't received very good directions, so we made our way about half a mile down a very steep hill before we realized we weren't going the right way. So, of course, we had to walk back up the hill. Once we got to the top, we realized we'd walked right by the bus station. We took a one hour bus ride to another bus station, then another two-and-a-half hour bus ride to a subway station in Tokyo, then a subway ride to the other side of town. During that ride, a notification was displayed on a screen in the train that our train back to Tsukuba had been shut down because of lightning. By this point, we were all bleeding our reserve tanks dry. Fortunately, by the time we got to Akihabara and got something to eat (shamefully, at McDonald's) the train was running again. We had an hour-long train ride and then another 20 minute walk to the hotel from the station. Finally, at 9:00 pm, about 10 hours after we'd started the climb down the mountain and 35 hours after we'd left the hotel, I slid my card into the door and stumbled into the hotel room.

Next: the aftermath.