Sea-to-Summit

So tomorrow myself, my colleague Ryosuke and about 80 other foolish people will gather on Higashi Tagonoura beach in Kanagawa (or it might even be in Shizuoka) at 5.30am, scoop up a bottle full of seawater then walk to the top of Mt Fuji, 47km along and 3.7km up away to pour the seawater away, thereby doing our bit to help the water cycle here in Japan. We're also helping Oxfam do something in Syria, possibly arming the rebels or paying for an assassination squad to take out Assad or whatever it is that Oxfam do in these war zones.

I don't think this will be the furthest I've ever walked in one go, I think the Yamathon back in April was the same or a bit longer, however that was flat. But this is certainly the longest I've ever walked uphill and defintely the highest I've ever been upwards under my own steam. In fact it will be the highest I've been that isn't in a pressurised steel tube with wings and as Fuji is 3,776m high and into the zone that altitude sickness starts, it's the one unknown that I'm worried about - apparently altitude sickness can affect anyone, is impossible to diagnose before you get it and cannot be 'cured' as such, although if you start to feel its effects whistling is the thing to do, apparently. Anyway we'll see what happens...

Most people climbing Fuji start at one of the 5th stations, by the time we hit the Fujinomiya 5th Station we'll have been going for about 13 hours and climbed 2,400 meters. There we'll have a break for a couple of hours before pushing on for the summit, still 1,300m and about 7 hours away. The aim is to get to the top and watch the sunrise on Sunday morning along with thousands of other people - such is the crush that it's standing room only, especially during a weekend in July (the climbing season is only 2 months, you can do it at other times but the huts are all closed and in winter there is a lot of snow and very high winds). The queues can be pretty long, as you can see from these images on Flickr.

Anyway, all now prepared and will be meeting Ryo at Shinjuku at 3pm to get the train down to Numazu, from where we will start tomorrow morning. The weather looks OK at the moment, according to these guys but it changes every hour, as you might expect. That said it looks like we'll get a little bit of rain at some point on the climb but at least it (hopefully) won't be too cold or windy at the top.

Full report to follow on Sunday or Monday...