18 ~ 19 August 2012
#18
Subashiri (5th Station) >> Summit >> Subashiri (5th Station)
[Clouds and more clouds]
#18
Subashiri (5th Station) >> Summit >> Subashiri (5th Station)
[Clouds and more clouds]
I had kept an eye on the weather forecast all week and except for rain showers on Saturday afternoon the night and Sunday morning looked like they were going to be perfect so I set out for Gotemba early on Saturday morning. I planned to take the 12:00 bus to the Subashiri 5th Station and as I went to do a little last minute food shopping the afternoon rains that were forecast started to come down with a vengeance. Heavy rain with bright flashes of lightening and loud claps of thunder. Thankfully by the time the bus arrived at the Subashiri 5th Station the rains had stopped and as forecast the weather was slowly beginning to clear up.
I left the 5th Station at 13:40 at a very slow gentle pace with the intention of getting to the summit in about 5-6 hours to see the sunset and then descending to about 3200m to sit it out for the night before heading back to the summit to see the sunrise. In the past I have climbed the Subashiri trail, descended to the Yoshida 5th Station, after resting for a few hours, ascended the Yoshida trail to the summit and then returned home via the Subashiri 5th Station. On this occasion by the time I got to the 8th Station I didn't fancy going all the way to the summit and back down again so I sat outside the last hut on the Subashiri trail for a couple of hours just watching the sky start to turn dark.
Once the sun set the temperature fell very quickly and it started to get pretty cold. There were 2 ways to keep warm. One was to go into a hut but at this time of the climbing season the huts are usually fully booked. The other was to start walking. I didn't want to stay in a hut so I descended the Yoshida trail for a few hundred meters and then joined the ascending trail which brought me up to a a series of 3 mountain huts at around the 8th Station on the Yoshida trail. I sat outside each one for as long as I could, continuing to the next each time I got a little too cold. I stopped for over an hour at the final hut and then decided to head back down to the final hut on the Subashiri trail. The time was still only around 21:45 and by 22:30 I was sat back outside the 8th Station hut again.
I met a young Australian couple who had already been to the summit and were heading back to the Yoshida 5th Station. They still had 12 hours to wait until their bus took them back to Shinjuku in central Tokyo. I tried to convince them to return to the summit in time for the sunrise. I don't know what they decided to do in the end but I left them outside the 8th Station hut and repeated the little loop I had made a few hours earlier. An hour or so later I was back at the final hut at the 8th Station on the Yoshida trail. I sat it out for an hour or so wishing I had bought my sleeping bag with me. Close to midnight I finally started a very slow ascent towards the summit.
After getting to the summit I still had more than 2 hours to wait before sunrise. I put on all my layers and wrapped myself in a foil sheet and waited on a bench just outside the buildings at the top. More and more people arrived at the top but not so many that it felt crowded. I wanted to walk all the way to the other side of the crater to the weather station. The weather station is actually the highest point but I just didn't seem to have the energy to walk another 30 minutes so I held on and with about 30 minutes to go before sunrise headed towards the spot just a little way around the crater. There was a light wind and the wind chill was making it feel very cold so I returned back to the main buildings just to seek shelter from the cold wind.
I felt extremely tired and was literally falling asleep standing on my feet so I decided to head towards the first corner of the descending trail because it provides a perfect vantage point to enjoy the sunrise. As I settled down to take photographs of the sunrise a group of 4 young Japanese climbers from Osaka doing their very first climb on Mt. Fuji started chatting to me. They seemed full of energy and after sharing our Mt. Fuji stories and snapping a few photos of each other we said our goodbyes and I continued on a slow descent back down to the Yoshida 5th Station. At the Yoshida 5th Station I queued for a bus ticket back to Shinjuku and and an hour later I was heading back to Tokyo.
Inspite of all the tiredness and lack of sleep the climb had been really great simply because of the cloud formations and the colours.