Heaven and Hell

Back on the road again, I have a little bit of time left to wrap up my Japan travel, to fulfill those stray dreams that I had of things to do in this country. One of those dreams was to climb Mt.Fuji, the highest mountain in Japan.

Most people climbing Fuji (about 99%) start from the 5th station halfway up the mountain, and the idea of climbing from the base is enough to get you some confused looks from the people at the tourist counter. Luckily though, there is still a path that caters to stuborn fools who insist on climbing every vertical metre themselves - the Yoshidaguchi trail, which also happens to be the oldest, most historical and most spiritual of any of the trails, used by pilgrims in the centuries before the 5th station and its bus network came into existence. The trail begins at Sengen Shrine, where like the pilgrims of old I pray (very, very hard) for safety along the way. From the Shrine, a winding dirt track leads into the forest, where the journey begins...

The lower reaches of the climb are truly heavenly. As I sit on my break in the middle of the lush forest, a bright blue butterfly as big as my hand floats past, completely oblivious to my futile attempts to get a photo of it. The trail becomes gradually becomes steeper, and before I know it I am entering the clouds above me, and am surrounded by mist. It turns out to be the perfect weather for the forest though; ancient shrines, decaying buildings, eerie silence and ethereal mist all complement each other to create a truly magical atmosphere. What is more, I have the path entirely to myself, with not a single Japanese tourist venturing to travel along this section. For hours I walk alone, in the land of the gods of the forest and the ghosts of centuries gone by.

Just as the afternoon is threatening to turn to evening, I hear voices for the first time on my pilgrimage...It turns out to be three Australians, who are trying to fiure out the best way to reach shelter before nightfall. How is it that four Australians manage to find each other on an abandoned track on the slopes of Mt.Fuji? We journey together until we finally we reach a hut just before sunset, happy to have found our way before dark. After hours of steadily persevering upwards, we have broken through the clouds, and are now in the heavenly world above. The days hiking finished, we stand on the top of the ledge, looking down on the sea of sky below us.

We sleep together in the mountain hut at 2000m altitude, and wake up at 3.30am to begin the next days ascent. We start climbing in the dark, but as we puff and pant our way up the slopes, the sky gradually begins to lighten. Eventually we decide to take a break, and sit down to watch the most memorable scene of any climb up Mt.Fuji - Sunrise. It is truly spectacular. Eating our breakfast of home-made rice balls, we sit dumbstruck before the truly awe-inspiring sight of a sea of pink and yellow clouds, the soft rays of first light, and a tiny crescent moon twinkling far above.

This is the end of heaven for us. From here the scenery begins to change, gradually coming to look much more like hell. The vegetation sheltering us from the wind begins to die off; first the trees, then the shrubs, then the grass, leaving us on a barren mountain slope with nothing but purple-red rock and dust. The rocks here are mostly lava formations, bubbling rivers of molten rock cooled mere centuries ago, and could only be described as hellish. The gradient becomes ridiculous, as the mountain trail gives way to endless staircases of rock and chains, and we occasionally end up on all fours climbing up the faces of the lava-rocks. My prayers to the gods of wind and rain at the shrine below also appear to have worn off, and the landscape is soon accentuated with ferocious wind and driving rain, which seems to be attacking us from sideways rather than vertically.

Luckily, my host dad had insisted on giving me hundreds of dollars worth of high-tech hiking gear before I left, and I feel very grateful to him as I don my gore-tex jacket, gore-tex pants, and my gore-tex hat and gloves. Still, the water ends up finding its way into my leather shoes, where it accumulates happily until it forms a pond around my feet. Only hours after that heavenly sunrise, we are encased in cloud with our heads down persevering through hell.

It only gets worse the higher we go. Not only is the weather gradually getting worse and worse, but we are starting to feel the effects of altitude, and I am beginning to wish I had bought one of those oxygen bottles the Japanese were puffing on every few steps of their climb. Instead, I take the much cheaper option of just panting heavily and trudging very slowly...conversation is out of the question, as even if we had the breath to speak the wind would whip away our words before anyone could hear them. So we pass the hours in silence, just trudging through the rain, one step after another, occasionally stopping to take shelter in bathrooms in order to empty out the puddles in our shoes.

Eventually we reach 3400m of altitude, only 376m from the top. We stop at a hut and ordered some food, hoping it will warm us up. However, our rest ends up having the opposite effect, as without the strenuous activity of hiking up the mountain we quickly start shaking violently. We hoped that by taking a break, we would wait out the worst of the weather, but it proves a futile hope; when we exit the hut at last, we are greeted by what could only be described as a hurricane. The rain is practically torrential, depositing huge volumes of water into the growing puddles in the lava-rock, and the wind is so strong it is actually picking that water back up off the surface of the puddle and hurling it back into the air. We are told that we are only one hour from the peak, but the thought of heading any higher in these sort of conditions immediately conjures up images of newspaper headlines: "Australian idiots attempt to climb Mt.Fuji in storm, search teams still looking". As if we needed any more ominious signs, Clancy's lips have started to turn blue, and gentle rumbles of thunder begin to echo through the clouds, around us rather than above us. I abandon my dream of climbing to the peak of Mt.fuji in favour of my dream of living to see my 19th birthday. None of us are happy about the decision, but we all agree that it is the right thing to do.

Ok, so I didn't get a photo of me on the roof of Japan. But I still saw more of Mt.Fuji than anyone starting from halfway, and I did get to see an amazing sunrise! And I will always have a great story to tell at parties, about the time I almost climbed Mt.Fuji.