Initial report back - Subashiri Trail

First things, or rather, last things first: Subashiri Trail means Slippery Sand Trail. More on this later.

Going up.

Right up until the first of the two 7th Station Lodges, the Subashiri Trail is delightful and the forest cover persists for the duration of this initial portion of the climb.
My thirteen year old’s keen eyes even spotted a Japanese Serow/Kamoshika ambling along beside us.
We stayed at the Taiyo Kan, the first of the two 7th Station huts. I understand that the Miharashi Kan hut is quite a bit cheaper but we were happy with our choice.
This had to do with our starting the day at 5am in order to leave our base in Tokyo and get a Tokaido Line train from Shinagawa to Kōzu station in order to get a Gotemba line train to Gotemba Station at 7am to then get our bus (from stop number 3 on the Fuji side of the station) to the Subashiri 5th Station at half past 8.
We reached the lower 7th station at around 15:30 and all of us were ready to stop for the day. Dinner was served at 17:30.

We got up at 4:30am and hauled on some puffer jackets and warm trousers to go see the sun rise in an already reddened horizon.
Climbing up gets you higher but, from our point of view, doesn’t make the view any more beautiful than it already is at this point.
New Year Hatsuhinode is a very important tradition in our family and the sunrise was as magnificent and exquisite as we could have hoped. We did not feel that we missed out by not having this experience at the summit.
The Taiyo Kan hut doesn’t seem to offer a separate breakfast for those who stay in the morning anymore and we were given a bento when we checked in. Use of the dining area is allowed from 5am and a cup of bancha tea is provided.
We set off at about 6am. The sunrise gazing gave us fair warning of how nippy the weather had become compared to the balminess of the previous day and we put on warmer clothes.
Which we then stripped off in a quiet and clean corner around the Fuji Hotel at one of the higher 8th stations.
Climbing gets significantly harder past the first 7th Station and the hardest part is the very last 400 metres (the part wisely turned away from by petec ’s kid)
We arrived at the summit at the same time as 92 year old man who had gone up the Yoshida trail and a 7 year old girl who had started the climb at the same time as us and stayed at the same hut.
The weather at the very top was immediately much chillier with whippy strong gusts that made me nervous as a parent responsible for someone with a slight, slender frame wearing a backpack. We had a scorching hot drink. My kid had her “Gandalf stick” burned with a commemoration stamp and I had the wooden token received at the 5th Station on paying the 1,000yen conservation fee singed also. We went to the small shrine at the top, paid our respects and got away. It wasn’t somewhere I wanted to linger.

The descent.

You’ll have heard about certain languages having lots of names for snow, or even rain. Subashiri is a much better word than shale but it doesn’t cover what you are going to find coming down. There isn’t one kind. Whatever technique you adopt to deal with a portion of the trail will be inadequate for another part. Adapting an effective way of sliding for the new portion will leave you unprepared for the next, and so on, and so on, and so on. The combinations of foundation-ground, small shale, medium shale, pebbles, rocks, boulders and dust are seemingly endless. You will fall.
Hiking sticks are great but will prove more or less useful depending on the kind of shale you’re on.
The exhausting part of descending is mental, it requires unrelenting focus for every step you take, for endless sections of the descent there are no opportunities to take a normal, surefooted step. How your foot will land and slide will be unpredictable. It is relentless.

Thankfully, we found gaiters worked a treat. All of us had ankle boots and gaiters and none of us took in shale.
We saw other descenders literally pouring piles of grit out of their footwear.

I hired a pair of walking sticks for 2,000yen from the 5th Station. I can’t imagine how I would have managed without them. MrLapLap wasn’t keen on having any for the ascent but found them useful going down. So much so that we shared, I went down with one and he had the other. We would have fallen a lot more without them.
Take gloves. The rock that makes up the shale was “carbonated” when it solidified and is painfully abrasive. They will help prevent grazing. Also useful when using sticks as your hands are liable to sunburn.

We reached the bottom (5th station) at 16:20, just in time to return and pay for the hiking sticks and have an ice cream before getting the 16:45 bus to Gotemba.
Bus back left on time but arrived after 17:50, meaning that we missed our preferred train. The next train to Kōzu departed at 18.18 and we arrived at Shinagawa at 19:30 or so, from Shinagawa we got the 97 bus and arrived back just after 8pm.