July 4 is just another day in Japan, but as an American living in the country, I usually try to do something fun to celebrate my home country’s Independence Day. Eat a hamburger, go to the beach, or maybe even go to a local Japanese fireworks festival if one just so happens to coincidentally fall on the same day. But I ‘ve never spent the Fourth of July in Japan the way one of my countrymen did this year: needing to be rescued from the side of Mt. Fuji despite the trail still being officially closed.

There are four trails that lead to the top of Mt. Fuji. One of them, Yamanashi Prefecture’s Yoshida Trail, opened on July 1, but the other three, Shizuoka Prefecture’s Fujinomiya, Gotemba, and Subashiri Trails, aren’t open for climbing until July 10. So none of them were open when a 67-year-old American man decided to start hiking up the mountain on June 26, but while he was apparently in a hurry to get onto the mountain, he doesn’t seem to have been in a rush to leave, having set up a tent near the Fujinomiya Trail’s seventh station to camp out in.

On July 4, a call came in to Japan’s 119 emergency services number from other people who were in the area that “A foreign man is calling out for help from his tent.” The police were then able to coordinate with the operator of a mountain hut who was able to locate the man and transport him using maintenance equipment back down to the trail’s fifth station, where police and fire officials took over. The American man appeared to be suffering from hypothermia, and despite being dressed in cold-weather clothing had sandals on his feet, though it’s unclear if he he’d been wearing more appropriate footwear while making his ascent to where he’d set up his tent.

The man told rescue workers that he’d hiked to the summit of Mt. Fuji twice before this trip, which seems to have contributed to his overconfidence regarding his mountaineering capabilities. Then, in a lightning-fast example of history repeating itself, a similar situation happened the very next day.

On the night of July 5, the Shizuoka Prefectural Police received a call, forwarded from a mobile phone service provider, informing them that a 59-year-old American woman was lost and needed to be rescued from, once again, the Shizuoka side of Mt. Fuji. The call came slightly after 8 p.m., and the woman had said “I’m lost on Mt. Fuji. It’s dark and I’m very frightened, so please help me.”

So once again, a rescue team was dispatched, and thankfully they were able to find her and escort her down safely. The woman, who had entered the Gotemba Trail earlier that day, had been able to make it to the summit of Mt. Fuji, but then became lost while making her descent, taking a wrong turn onto a path that connects the Gotemba and Fujinomiya Trails via Mt. Hoei, a flank volcano next to Mt. Fuji. This means she was making her descent through unfamiliar terrain in the dark, and on a separate mountain from the one she’d just hiked up, all of which no doubt contributed to her feeling of disorientation and fear. The woman told the rescue team that she was traveling in Japan on vacation, and while she’s done mountain hikes outside Japan, this was her first time at Mt. Fuji.

So to review, in both cases the people who needed to be rescued weren’t just hiking outside of the official climbing season, which is already a bad idea, but compounded the risk by hiking alone.

Despite how gently Mt. Fuji’s slopes appear when viewed from a distance, and how popular it’s become as a tourism destination in recent years, it’s still the tallest mountain in Japan, and trekking to the top can be very dangerous. Odds are both of the American hikers who needed rescuing figured they’d be fine, since they weren’t hiking all that much ahead of when the Shizuoka trails open. However, the trails still being closed means that the full array of on-site support systems aren’t up and running yet either, which in turn means longer response times for rescue teams, which could have life-threatening results, so if you’re going to climb Mt. Fuji this summer, make sure you do it the right way.

Source: Shizuoka Broadcasting System (1, 2) via Yahoo! Japan News via Otakomu
Top image: Pakutaso