Kate’s Quests

So…we hiked the thing. DJ and I planned to hike the Fujiyomiya route which is supposed to take 4-6 hours. We left the house Friday at 5pm and planned to start hiking when we got there (about a 4 hour trip from home). Then we’d be at the top for sunrise and hike down first thing in the morning. Well…things did not go as well as planned. We got to the bus station and the buses had stopped running. So…we told the cab driver where we wanted to go and he took us there. Except it wasn’t really there. He took us to the Gotemba route. This route is 1000 meters (3,380 ft.) lower than where we wanted to start. They say that “this is by far the lowest 5th Station, and the ascent to the summit is accordingly much longer than from the other 5th stations”. They also say that it takes about 7-10 hours to hike it. Well…they would be wrong. At least for me, they were.

So we started hiking at 10pm and reached the fifth station at 10:30 or 11pm. Around 1am is when I started to feel sick. Looking back on it, I’m sure it was altitude sickness. I’ve never been this high and was feeling pretty crappy. But, we powered through it and I just got slower and slower. Most people climb in the afternoon, find a hut and sleep for a couple of hours and then finish the ascent in the early morning hours. Had I gotten some sleep, I’m sure I would have had more strength as well. Sunrise was at 4am and we were still hiking up. At 11am we reached a station and had a cup of noodles and continued on. We subsisted on energy bars and that cup of soup for 22 hours. We reached the summit at 4:00pm and took some pictures. I had run out of water awhile ago and was looking for a place to buy some, but there wasn’t any to be found. I asked a guy where I could buy something and he said that there wasn’t anyone selling anything and he gave me a bottle of Pocari Sweat. It’s basically Gatorade and I have never been so thankful for the kindness of strangers as I was on that day. And so we started down the path that we originally wanted to climb up at 4:30pm. Due to the amount of people climbing up, we had long lines and jammed pathways, so it took us about 5 hours to come back down.

Once we got to the bottom of the hill at 9:30pm, we found that the last bus had left at 8:00pm. So our only option was a cab. $90 later we were at the train station and making our way back home. We were talking about the food that we would eat and how amazing it would be to be back in our own beds. And then we got to a station in which we were supposed to switch to the Tokaido line in order to get home, but there were no more trains. So we took a $70 cab ride to the connecting station only to find that they had stopped running as well. We looked at five different hotels to no avail and that took until 1am. The first train left at 4:34, so we just found a bench and rested until the first train. We finally got home at 7am on Sunday morning and went to right sleep. We slept until 1pm and then had some lunch, which I couldn’t keep down. Having had nothing but horrible energy bars (if I never see another bar like those it’ll be too soon) and a cup of noodles in three days of strenuous climbing, my stomach was pretty sensitive. We’re doing better today and glad to be done. My face, neck and the tops of my hands are burnt pretty badly and I’m sore as all get out, but I’ve never been more happy to be done with something as I am with that climb. It was the most grueling experience I’ve ever been through.

DJ was extremely helpful getting me up and down that mountain, though. If I had any doubts about him being there for me when I need it most, they’re gone now. It was very humbling and I thought more than once, “this is what being broken by a mountain feels like.” I cried, I didn’t sleep, I hardly ate, I ran out of water. Being on the mountain and being completely run down, but knowing that if I didn’t keep moving that I could actually die up there….was an interesting feeling. DJ said at the end though….”if you can do that, then you have no right to say that you’re not athletic. It was hard, but you did it and you can do anything after that.” I think he’s right.