(no subject)
This is extremely out of date, but I realized that I never posted it. I'm putting it here now mostly because I'd just like to have it all in the same place.
To be honest, this is the shortest part of the story. The three of us were sitting at the top of the mountain, a bit warmer out of the wind, clutching at our cans of overpriced hot chocolate more to thaw out our fingers than anything else. I hoped that the weather would settle before we had to venture out again, but the hut attendants had some bad news: we’d better get going, because the weather was going to get worse before it was going to get better.
In spite of our exhaustion, we all stood up and resigned ourselves to a walk down in the rain. Lindsay and I ducked out to the outhouse before we began, and were almost instantly toppled over by a gust of wind that literally made me convulse (rather than merely shiver) from cold. For the first time since starting, I really wondered if I was going to be able to make it down again. I can’t remember ever being in a situation where the decision to go to the bathroom was actually a difficult one - did I really want to deal with removing any of my precious layers, even for a few seconds, no matter how badly I had to pee?
There’s not much to say about the descent itself. The descending trail is different from the ascending - there are no rocks, only soft, smooth, switchbacks of mud and dirt. It would have been an easier trail to ascend, as well, were it not for the fact that the descending trail has no huts where we could have stopped. The ascent had taken us around 8 hours with stops; the descent took us 2 ½. The only stop we made was a bathroom break for Linds about halfway down. The ground was so soft and wet that it felt as much like skiing as it did like walking - our feet slid down, leaving long, narrow tracks. It was slippery, though; all of us landed on our butts at least once. By the time we reached the bottom, our pants were all red with volcanic dust from the knee down. My indigo blue jeans were actually bleached out by the sand near the ankles. I’d taken my gloves, and then my spare socks, off my hands at the summit because they were too drenched to do any good; I climbed down with my fists clutching the ends of my sleeves tucked under. This kept them warm enough, but when we finally found somewhere warm to sit down at the 5th station base, it was literally a struggle to unclench my hands.
None of us had much in the way of spare clothes. We hadn’t known there would be lockers at the 5th station, and we hadn’t wanted to deal with the weight of carrying them (and they would have gotten wet in our bags anyway). Lindsay and I made a bit of an effort to dry a few things under the hand driers in the bathroom, but it didn’t really work. A few other climbers had found a good trick that Chad and I both used, though: we bought new socks, sold for Y300 at the shop, and asked for two plastic bags. We put the new socks on, then put our feet in the bags, and then our bagged feet back into our boots. That kept us from having to deal with having our cold feet in our soggy boots. If anyone reading this ever finds him/herself in this kind of situation, I highly recommend trying that trick. It’s not the most comfortable thing in the world, but it works to keep you warm.
The tickets were all sold out for the first bus home, so we had to wait for the next one. We got some pretty bad food at one restaurant at the base, then switched to another where we drank coffee and ate plain rice (you have no idea how good that tastes when you’re starving and exhausted). The rain didn’t stop until after we’d all parted ways in Shibuya, Chad to head to his girlfriend’s place and Lindsay and I to our apartments in Shin-maruko. My apartment has a bad habit of absolutely baking in the heat, but when I opened my door I’d never felt anything more welcome than the wall of warmth that assaulted me. I normally hate that. I stumbled into the apartment, left my dirty clothes in the entryway, had a very quick shower, and passed out for about three hours.
When I woke up, I felt fiercely ill: my eyes felt swollen and crusty, my hands felt puffy, and my entire body ached with that miserable hot-and-cold feeling that accompanies a high fever. I wasn’t at all surprised. It was about 7:30 and the sun was beginning to set outside. I popped two extra-strength Tylenol and chased them with two full glasses of water, and then lay, on my stomach, on the floor of my apartment in my full sweats and hoodie and with my cheek pressed to the cool hardwood floor. Before I could fall asleep like that, I was assaulted by stomach pangs that reminded me that I still hadn’t eaten anything substantial since I came down the mountain. Outside was still overcast and damp, but it wasn’t raining, so the idea of dashing out to a convenience store wasn’t mortifying. When I opened the door, I was hit by a cold-air wall as solid as the hot-air wall had been when I had entered the apartment those few hours earlier, but my stomach had all but convinced me that I was going to implode if I didn’t feed it something.
As it turned out, the decision to go out to get food was a good one for many reasons. The obvious reason was that I was really, really, really hungry. A less obvious reason was that my legs had cramped a little, and the short walk was good for them. And the final reason was that getting out of the house made me realize that I didn’t actually have a fever - rather, the reason I felt so ill was because I had fallen asleep in my ungodly hot apartment, which, as I mentioned earlier, roasts in the heat at the best of times, and thus was baking me like a turkey inside. It took about five minutes for my body to adjust to the temperature outside (which felt cold only in relation to the heat of the apartment, and was actually perfectly comfortable t-shirt weather). When I returned to my room, a bento in one hand and CSI DVD in the other, I recognized my room for the barbecue it was, and propped open my front and balcony doors to get a bit of a cross-wind to cool it off (which was as far as I was willing to go. Memories of the mountain made me afraid of the air conditioner.)
I recount that short anecdote because, apart from two days of serious muscle aches, that was as close as I came to becoming ill from the climb. I am, in a strange way, proud of this: as everyone knows, my body has a habit of not living up to my expectations, even though my expectations have dropped appropriately over the years to levels I’d like to think my not-so-old bones can reach. But it got me to the top of the mountain and back, under the most atrocious conditions imaginable during open season, with nothing more than muscle aches and exhaustion to show for it in terms of physical ailments. In some ways, I appreciate the added challenge of the bad weather, because it was that much more that this jalopy of mine managed to plough through. I saw Lindsay a few days later, and we had a great time comparing stories of our first day back at work, laughing at the number of times our coworkers and students cocked eyebrows at us - in sympathy, incredulity, or as an expression of well-what-did-you-expect,-really? - when we yelped ITAI! upon the slightest exertions. Itai, by the way, is Japanese for “pain!” or “it hurts!” or something. I’m not sure how the translation would be best worded.
An amusing anecdote: the following weekend, I went out with some students (for my birthday, actually) and it started to rain while we were at dinner. We decided to go to karaoke, which involved, of course, going to another building, which involved running through the rain. Before I stepped out from the building’s covered entryway, I felt this brief moment of dread that caught me quite off-guard - it was just the rain, after all! It took me a moment to realize that it was exactly the same feeling I had felt every time Lindsay, Chad and I steeled ourselves to step back out into the rain after a short break in one of the Fuji-san huts. It’s strange how psychology works - how strongly we can recall those emotions when we’ve felt them strongly enough. By the next time it rained, I’d gotten over it. And now, I’m far enough removed that I find myself thinking that I’d even climb again, given the opportunity. I’m not so bold, however, not to set certain conditions on that claim: the weather would have to be good, and I’d have to know that I would actually be able to see the sunrise.
To be honest, this is the shortest part of the story. The three of us were sitting at the top of the mountain, a bit warmer out of the wind, clutching at our cans of overpriced hot chocolate more to thaw out our fingers than anything else. I hoped that the weather would settle before we had to venture out again, but the hut attendants had some bad news: we’d better get going, because the weather was going to get worse before it was going to get better.
In spite of our exhaustion, we all stood up and resigned ourselves to a walk down in the rain. Lindsay and I ducked out to the outhouse before we began, and were almost instantly toppled over by a gust of wind that literally made me convulse (rather than merely shiver) from cold. For the first time since starting, I really wondered if I was going to be able to make it down again. I can’t remember ever being in a situation where the decision to go to the bathroom was actually a difficult one - did I really want to deal with removing any of my precious layers, even for a few seconds, no matter how badly I had to pee?
There’s not much to say about the descent itself. The descending trail is different from the ascending - there are no rocks, only soft, smooth, switchbacks of mud and dirt. It would have been an easier trail to ascend, as well, were it not for the fact that the descending trail has no huts where we could have stopped. The ascent had taken us around 8 hours with stops; the descent took us 2 ½. The only stop we made was a bathroom break for Linds about halfway down. The ground was so soft and wet that it felt as much like skiing as it did like walking - our feet slid down, leaving long, narrow tracks. It was slippery, though; all of us landed on our butts at least once. By the time we reached the bottom, our pants were all red with volcanic dust from the knee down. My indigo blue jeans were actually bleached out by the sand near the ankles. I’d taken my gloves, and then my spare socks, off my hands at the summit because they were too drenched to do any good; I climbed down with my fists clutching the ends of my sleeves tucked under. This kept them warm enough, but when we finally found somewhere warm to sit down at the 5th station base, it was literally a struggle to unclench my hands.
None of us had much in the way of spare clothes. We hadn’t known there would be lockers at the 5th station, and we hadn’t wanted to deal with the weight of carrying them (and they would have gotten wet in our bags anyway). Lindsay and I made a bit of an effort to dry a few things under the hand driers in the bathroom, but it didn’t really work. A few other climbers had found a good trick that Chad and I both used, though: we bought new socks, sold for Y300 at the shop, and asked for two plastic bags. We put the new socks on, then put our feet in the bags, and then our bagged feet back into our boots. That kept us from having to deal with having our cold feet in our soggy boots. If anyone reading this ever finds him/herself in this kind of situation, I highly recommend trying that trick. It’s not the most comfortable thing in the world, but it works to keep you warm.
The tickets were all sold out for the first bus home, so we had to wait for the next one. We got some pretty bad food at one restaurant at the base, then switched to another where we drank coffee and ate plain rice (you have no idea how good that tastes when you’re starving and exhausted). The rain didn’t stop until after we’d all parted ways in Shibuya, Chad to head to his girlfriend’s place and Lindsay and I to our apartments in Shin-maruko. My apartment has a bad habit of absolutely baking in the heat, but when I opened my door I’d never felt anything more welcome than the wall of warmth that assaulted me. I normally hate that. I stumbled into the apartment, left my dirty clothes in the entryway, had a very quick shower, and passed out for about three hours.
When I woke up, I felt fiercely ill: my eyes felt swollen and crusty, my hands felt puffy, and my entire body ached with that miserable hot-and-cold feeling that accompanies a high fever. I wasn’t at all surprised. It was about 7:30 and the sun was beginning to set outside. I popped two extra-strength Tylenol and chased them with two full glasses of water, and then lay, on my stomach, on the floor of my apartment in my full sweats and hoodie and with my cheek pressed to the cool hardwood floor. Before I could fall asleep like that, I was assaulted by stomach pangs that reminded me that I still hadn’t eaten anything substantial since I came down the mountain. Outside was still overcast and damp, but it wasn’t raining, so the idea of dashing out to a convenience store wasn’t mortifying. When I opened the door, I was hit by a cold-air wall as solid as the hot-air wall had been when I had entered the apartment those few hours earlier, but my stomach had all but convinced me that I was going to implode if I didn’t feed it something.
As it turned out, the decision to go out to get food was a good one for many reasons. The obvious reason was that I was really, really, really hungry. A less obvious reason was that my legs had cramped a little, and the short walk was good for them. And the final reason was that getting out of the house made me realize that I didn’t actually have a fever - rather, the reason I felt so ill was because I had fallen asleep in my ungodly hot apartment, which, as I mentioned earlier, roasts in the heat at the best of times, and thus was baking me like a turkey inside. It took about five minutes for my body to adjust to the temperature outside (which felt cold only in relation to the heat of the apartment, and was actually perfectly comfortable t-shirt weather). When I returned to my room, a bento in one hand and CSI DVD in the other, I recognized my room for the barbecue it was, and propped open my front and balcony doors to get a bit of a cross-wind to cool it off (which was as far as I was willing to go. Memories of the mountain made me afraid of the air conditioner.)
I recount that short anecdote because, apart from two days of serious muscle aches, that was as close as I came to becoming ill from the climb. I am, in a strange way, proud of this: as everyone knows, my body has a habit of not living up to my expectations, even though my expectations have dropped appropriately over the years to levels I’d like to think my not-so-old bones can reach. But it got me to the top of the mountain and back, under the most atrocious conditions imaginable during open season, with nothing more than muscle aches and exhaustion to show for it in terms of physical ailments. In some ways, I appreciate the added challenge of the bad weather, because it was that much more that this jalopy of mine managed to plough through. I saw Lindsay a few days later, and we had a great time comparing stories of our first day back at work, laughing at the number of times our coworkers and students cocked eyebrows at us - in sympathy, incredulity, or as an expression of well-what-did-you-expect,-really? - when we yelped ITAI! upon the slightest exertions. Itai, by the way, is Japanese for “pain!” or “it hurts!” or something. I’m not sure how the translation would be best worded.
An amusing anecdote: the following weekend, I went out with some students (for my birthday, actually) and it started to rain while we were at dinner. We decided to go to karaoke, which involved, of course, going to another building, which involved running through the rain. Before I stepped out from the building’s covered entryway, I felt this brief moment of dread that caught me quite off-guard - it was just the rain, after all! It took me a moment to realize that it was exactly the same feeling I had felt every time Lindsay, Chad and I steeled ourselves to step back out into the rain after a short break in one of the Fuji-san huts. It’s strange how psychology works - how strongly we can recall those emotions when we’ve felt them strongly enough. By the next time it rained, I’d gotten over it. And now, I’m far enough removed that I find myself thinking that I’d even climb again, given the opportunity. I’m not so bold, however, not to set certain conditions on that claim: the weather would have to be good, and I’d have to know that I would actually be able to see the sunrise.