The final training before the 100km event itself, I intended to make it count with a 4-day hiking and camping trip around fuji 5-lakes. No other snailwalkers present, but I did have Mrs Wooders for company from day 2.
The trip hiking distance total finished at just over 50km in 4 days - a good distance, but worrying in the extreme to imagine in one weeks time we’ll be attempting twice the distance in half the time…
Day one: Surogouyama Station to Hirano, Yamanka-ko (Checkpoint 7 to Finish)
Who: Paul W (lonely, so lonely and sad and blue)
When: 3 May 2008
Where: Checkpoint 7 to Checkpoint 8 to finish
Navigator: Paul W
Distance: 21 km (trip total: 21 km)
Duration: 6h 30m (trip total: 6h 30m)
Altitude (Max): 1050m
Day one of the 4-day extravaganza was a solo effort to check out the final 20% of the Oxfam course – checkpoint 7 to the finish. Alone on the last training before the 100k I hear you exclaim? As I started the damp walk though the village of Surugouyama, I imagined my fellow snailwalkers: Paul M , sipping Bacardi and cokes in a hammock somewhere in Okinawa, his spotless hiking boots safely and snugly tucked away in the same box he bought them in 2 months ago. Reza, sensibly taking a week out to rest his knee to ensure peak fitness in time for the event. Khilan, probably in Roponngi somewhere being kneaded by a slim Thai girl trying to get that disc to slip back in again, and our newest recruit, Florin, unable to get out of previous commitments, but at least he would be getting a bit muddy and dirty on a football field somewhere coaching his team.
Ah well, a solo effort it was to be. Not generally the safest, but I enjoy my own company – its normally the only way to ensure decent conversation (boom boom). I settled down into my own rhythm and started the hike up. The drizzle escalated into rain, so I stopped to get into my wet weather gear, secretly glad of the rain for a chance to road-test my new waterproof kit. I’m not going to say I stayed dry – I think I got wetter from the sweat condensing inside my waterproof jacket and trousers than if I hadn’t been wearing them, but at least I was warm.
Checkpoint 7 to 8 is TOUGH, and whoever masterminded this 100km route must have a sadistic streak in them to put it right at the end of the course. I think the stage is the longest uphill of the course - 13/14 km non-stop climb with very little flat ground for recovery. It starts off easy enough as you start up a long winding tarmac path, and the first stage to the Yozuku Pass is a trudge, but not a killer – then you hit the final steep climb up to Mount Yubune.
This is frustrating – there are a number of really steep ascents, and you will be convinced each one will take to you the top, but it just keeps going with little bits of flat in between before the next hidden climb. The profile bares no relation to the one published in the Oxfam map-book, so don’t waste time trying to look there for comfort on how much further there is to go. The kicker is there is not even a very good view at the wooded peak. Boo. Here’s me swearing at the sign at the top.
After reaching the top of Mount Yubune, it should have been an easy 7 km “sprint” to the finish line, but there was a disaster looming – water shortage. I’d been using a camel-pac for the first time, and had no idea I was drinking so much – all 3 liters I was carrying were gone in the first 4 hours. I was facing the rest of the route with no liquid, and I was feeling very dehydrated from the excessive sweating under my waterproofs and the 80% humidity. A few kilometers on after Mount Yubune, and the next serious uphill hit me like a wall - my mouth was dry, I started to feel dizzy and I realized I was stopping every 10 meters to get my breath back. It felt a lot like how I have heard altitude sickness described, but this was clearly my body telling me it needed water, or else. From the map, I could see there was a flatter alternative route along the main road and I took the sensible but frustrating option of climbing off the trail and onto the road at the next available point and followed the road the final 3 miles all the way into Yamanaka. In doing so I missed out the 2 final minor peaks, but it was the safer decision as I was walking on my own. Optimistically I told myself I’d be glad of that when we are doing the 100km for a bit of fresh scenery at the end. Ha Ha!
<Interesting fact alert> Did you know that an apple is 84% water? Once I was over the pass in the final leg, and could see my end goal - Lake Yamanaka - just 2 km below me, I tucked into my apple that I had been saving as emergency water ration. I found a beautiful little viewpoint by a lay-by, sat down for 15 minutes and took my time sucking all the juice out of that delicious little apple, enjoying the sensation of the flesh fizzing on my dry mouth and dissolving into water. Beautiful. It was then a 30 minute tramp down from the pass and into Hirano. There I meet up with Sam who had come in on the bus from Shinjuku and had scoped out a decent camp site - Mizaki camping ground –for us in the eastern part of the lake. We pitched up, made a brew and settled down to watch the fisherman’s last few casts of the day as dusk settled in.
Day two: Mount Ishiwari
Who: Paul W (still lonely, so lonely and sad and blue)
When: 4 May 2008
Where: Mount Ishiwari
Navigator: Paul W
Distance: 6 km (trip total: 27 km)
Duration: 2h 30m (trip total: 9h)
Altitude (Max): ???
In the morning we rented bikes and cycled around Lake Yamanako. The lake is 13km in circumference, and it took us the best part of the morning to go round, stopping off at a few interesting spots on the way , including P’s Hammock café (perfect spot for a coffee, read and banana impression) and Yamanako Flower park (a diverting hour or so if you are in the area).
In the afternoon, the sun was threatening to come out, so I went off on another solo hike to Mount Ishiwari (1413m). This was a quick-hit trek – I was up and down the 6 km course in just over 2 hours. It was the first time I felt my stamina had noticeably improved – I was almost jogging up the steep, stepped path – having no weight in my backpack also made a huge difference, and I hardly had to stop to catch my breath. Views from the top were stunning, but Fuji’s peak remained stubbornly hidden in the clouds. I jogged most of the way down to lake level, feeling happy that I seemed to have recovered so quickly and completely from the previous days hydration problems.
Back at lake level, we went for an onsen and had a clean-boy dinner at Bistro ZaZa where the friendly French-trained Japnese chef made a superb Spaghetti Amatricana for me, and Fillet de bouef for Sam. They lost points for having no desert, but it gave us a good excuse to cook marshmallows over the camping stove back at the tent. You can take a Woodgate out of the scouts, but you’ll never take the scout out of a Woodgate…
Day three: Kawaguchi-ko to Lake Saiko
Who: Paul W plus wifey
When: 5 May 2008
Where: Kawaguchi
Navigator: Paul W
Distance: 13 km (trip total: 40km)
Duration: 6h (trip total: 15h)
We started day 3 with a bus ride from Hirano to Kawaguchi-ko, which is the more built-up of the 5 lakes. What followed was a long but enjoyable day of road-walking along the entire south side of Lake Kawaguchiko, away from the more touristy area and into the quieter west end. We got stuck here briefly as the rain started up again, and ended up having to duck into a shop front in the village to get out of a flash downpour. While stuck there we decided to have a brew (any excuse for a cuppa), so we laid out our roll-mats and got the portable stove out. The road was quite busy at this point, and watching the looks of the Japanese in their cars as they drove past, double-taking as they saw the crazy gaijin camped out on a main road in a shop alcove passed the time quite nicely. We were considering putting a sign up – “Actually we live in Hiro-o”, but the rain stopped so it was time to continue the hike.
We crossed through the pass and into the next-door Lake Saiko area. Of the 3 lakes we toured on this trip, Saiko was the clear favorite – much less built-up than the others, and on a deserted, cloudy Monday afternoon you would call it bleak in the handsome and epic way that the Scottish lochs can be.
We found an open café half-way round , and ducked in out of the drizzle for a restorative coffee and cake. We had one tourist stop-off at the Lake Saiko Bat Cave (no bats, although it was a cave right enough) - time for some photos in silly hats before finishing the day off with the final few kilometers to our next campsite.
As usual we screwed up the Japan bank holiday thing – everything was shut, and dinner that night consisted of one sachet of cup-a-soup, unappealing at best, insulting at worst. (In case you were wondering, the worst way to eat cup-a-soup is to take one sachet, dilute it across 2 servings, crush up pretzel pieces to stand in for croutons, and eat it all within sniffing distance of 3 barbecues. Voila.). Memories of our decadent steak and pasta meal at ZaZa’s the night before taunted us. We fell asleep hungry, listening to the sound of the stormy wind forcing its way over the mountains high above us.
Day four: Lake Saiko back to Kawakguchi-ko
Who: Paul W plus wifey
When: 6 May 2008
Navigator: Paul W
Distance: 12 km (trip total: 52km)
Duration: 6h 30m (trip total: 21h 30m)
Altitude (Max): 1355m
We awoke on day 4 to the clearest of clear blue skies – a storm had raged the whole night and finally blown itself away at about 2am. By 7:30am we were up, packed and ready to hit the trail. We would hike back to Kawaguchiko, but via the mountain route instead of the road-route we had come in on. The mountains above us were now clearly visible, where the day before they had been shrouded in low-hanging cloud. It was looking like it would be a wonderful days hiking. We turned the corner and entered the trail along the lake and got the first of many simply breathtaking Fuji views – the 4 day striptease was over, our patience was rewarded.
To see Fuji in all its glory, this close–up, is a rare and thrilling thing. In clear skies you can see the roads and hiking trails snaking their way up to the summit, you can see the HD detail of the crater summit (amazing to think that it takes over an hour just to circumnavigate the crater “peak” of this mountain), you can see the trees go from bare to snow-laden at the snow-line, and see the pock-marks of a hundred avalanches in the snow.
After an hour of walking through the lava fields surrounding the lake, and another hours climb, we reached our first peak and the closest point to Mount Fuji for this trip - so close, you could almost feel the extra gravitational pull on your fillings. From up here we were treated to another astonishing view, certainly the most spectacular of this trip, and possibly of all our travels in Japan so far. Below us, we could see the massive lava field which spewed out of Fuji in one of its more interesting eruptions in 862 AD, an entire land-mass which crawled out of Fujis core and dammed up a lake in 2 places, making 3 huge lakes out of one. Lake Saiko lay before us like a puddle, at one end we could make out the campsite we had left a few hours before, tiny specks of color the only sign of tents pitched in the field. Looking straight ahead, we could see distant snowy peaks floating above the vanishing point on the horizon, impossibly far away, yet still large enough to grab your attention momentarily from hypnotic Fuji. Here was a view to absorb, and we took our time to recover from the climb as we sucked in the scenery.
From there, it was another 1 hour hike along the ridge to the next peak - high-point for the day at 1355m, but an anti-climax in terms of view compared to the previous stop. The descent back to Lake Kawakuchigo was uneventful, and eventually a little arduous – our plan to catch a bus back to the station was scuppered by the irregular timetable, so we ended up adding another unplanned 4km road-walk before hitting the station to grab our coach back to Shinjuku.
Tired, but content, we sat at the back of the coach and watched the mountains fly by on the return journey to civilisation. After 4 days of walking, 3 nights in a tent, theres a simple pleasure to be had in a good sit on a reclining chair. We kicked our shoes off, headed horizontal and dozed as Fuji-san shrank to a memory on the horizon.
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