First Night Hike Recap

We had our first night hike on Friday night. We were doing Checkpoint 4 to Checkpoint 7 minus a stretch of about 6km of open road at the beginning. Altogether the hike was 38km.

We met up at Gotemba Station at around 7pm and took a bus for about 20 minutes to the place where we were going to start. After stretching a bit and getting our headlamps on, we began the hike. Other than the Mt. Fuji climb, none of us had ever gone hiking at night before. So this was sure to be an interesting evening. We walked down a road for a few minutes and then got to the point where we were supposed to turn onto the trail. We turned right and immediately we all stopped, clearly taken aback by how incredibly dark the trail was. After kind of getting over our brief moment of alarm, we started up the trail. I was in the lead at the beginning and my alarm returned when I turned the first corner and in the light from my headlamp I saw a pair of glowing green eyes. A black cat was standing in the middle of the trail. I was like, "Are you serious?" The cat quickly ran away though and we returned to our hiking.

The first stretch was a pretty long one, about 12 kilometers I believe. We basically climbed up a mountain and then back down the other side. There were some pretty interesting moments.

At one point we came across a point where a tree had fallen over right in the middle of the trail. We couldn't really see a good way to get around it, so we ended up just having to climb over it. Only a few minor scrapes occured. There was also a point where we came into this stretch of trail with tall, thick bamboo on either side. It was flat at that point and I got a strange sensation like the scene in "The Fellowship of the Ring" where the Hobbits are in that clearing and Frodo senses that the Ringwraiths are coming and the camera does that crazy zoom down the road. It was a bit creepy. The coolest part of that stretch however was when we got to the top of the mountain and took a short break. We looked out in the distance, and though it was extremely dark and a little cloudy, we could see the snow on the top of Mt. Fuji in the distance. I would have loved to get a picture of it, but it was way too dark so it'll just have to be a picture in my mind.

We finally got to Checkpoint 5, a really nice temple, and stopped to apply some bandaids and eat some onigiri. At least I ate onigiri. Linton had a homemade bacon sandwich which I decided was a great idea for the future. We stayed a little longer than intended at CP5 and then finally I downed a Red Bull and we got going. We got a bit lost trying to get started on the next part, but once we figured out where to go, we made great time. CP5-CP6 has a lot of open road so once we got on the road we got set on a nice, brisk pace and went for it. There's not much to note about that section, really. It'll be a welcome easy part when the actual hike comes.

When we got to CP6 around 2:45am, we realized that we had not seen a single person, car, or anything since we left the bus stop when we started the hike. In fact, the only other living thing we saw besides each other was that black cat. It gave us a sense of really being alone out there. Kind of cool and creepy at the same time.

We left CP6 at about 3am and headed out for the last stretch. This is where things got interesting. By this time, as you can imagine, we were quite tired. We were starting to slow down drastically. We got to a point around 4:00 where we had to go straight up a very steep trail to get up a mountain. It was no gradual incline. It was tough, but it got even worse about 15 minutes up the trail when it started to rain. We managed to get to the top before the big rain started. We quickly threw on our rain gear, wrapped up all of our stuff in plastic, bags, and set out again. The rain was really picking up and fog started to set in. It got to the point where the leader would literally have to stop every 30 seconds or so to see if we were still on the trail because it was so hard to see. We couldn't see more than about 5 meters in front of us. There was a point where we knew we had 2km until our next landmark on our map and we just kept walking and walking and walking. We were sure we were lost. We stopped and had about a 5 minute meeting to decide whether we should go back or keep moving. We decided to keep moving and we're glad we did. It turns out we were still on the trail, it was just taking us a long time because we couldn't see.

We still had quite a long way to go. We were pretty exhausted and started getting delirious. Ashley was asking random questions to keep from going to sleep while walking. I think Linton started whistling. I just walked in complete silence. We were being put to the test. Once the sun came up it got much easier for us to see. That definitely helped our pace. We got to the final stretch of open road and by this time it was really pouring. We walked along the open road for about 4km until we finally made it to town, saw a person for the first time, and made it to the train station just before CP7. We got to the station at 8:15. Altogether the hike took us 12.5 hours. Not too bad!

We learned some things from this hike. We definitely know we're going to be tired at these points, but we learned that positive thinking is the way to go. And we have to continually support each other. We each had a funk during the night at different points, so we have to remember that that's going to happen and not get frustrated if somebody is slowing down or getting edgy. We have to fight through the tests.

We have a few weeks off and then we're going to get back on it after the spring vacation. Sorry no pictures from this last hike. It was pretty dark. The next hike will be a day hike so I'll try to get some up from that.

Thank to everybody who has donated so far. We're getting so much more support than we imagined and getting close to our goal. I think we'll have no trouble reaching it and going beyond. It's really great so thanks a lot!