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Chapter 11

The Mountain Wants to Be Climbed

June 15, 2018

From Mount Nasu, I took a bus and then a train to the town of Inawashiro, in northern Fukushima Prefecture. I arrived at sunset, and felt a surge of gratitude as I left the station and saw an orderly line of jet-black taxis waiting at the stand. Neither my hotel for the next two nights, an onsen (volcanic hot-spring) resort at the base of Mount Bandai (磐梯山) (1,816 meters) nor the Bandai trailhead was accessible by bus. Without a taxi, I was looking at a multi-hour walk in the dark on the heels of my all-day Nasu climb.

My taxi driver recognized the hotel name and I sat back, looking forward to a relaxing ride.

As we left the station, the driver gestured out the window to his right. “Bandai-san.”

A massive conical mountain with a flattened summit rose majestically into the orange, blue, and lavender sunset sky. In other circumstances, the view would have inspired poetry.

As it was, the only thing that came to mind was Holy Shit, it’s huge!

When I was little, my parents told me curse words were the product of an uncreative mind: “A person who swears is telling you they can’t come up with anything more descriptive.”

As I stared at the unbelievably large volcano I planned to climb the following day, I was indeed unable to think of anything more creative than HOLY SHIT.

Originally named Iwahashi (rock ladder to the sky) and also known as “Aizu-Fuji” for its resemblance to Japan’s most famous peak, Mount Bandai erupted violently in 1888, killing almost 500 people and collapsing on itself, dramatically changing the shape of its northern face.

From the south, it looked intact and terrifying.

By the time I reached the hotel I desperately needed a meal, a bath, and good night’s sleep. The hotel restaurant—the only option for 10 kilometers in any direction—closed in 30 minutes, so I dropped my bags in my room and hauled my filthy carcass off to dinner.

In the restaurant, the wait staff walked me through the expansive all-you-can-eat buffet (which filled three rooms), explaining the options in rapid Japanese that I followed only enough to catch that the Special of the Day was horsemeat nabe—a hearty soup of meat (in this case, local horse) and various vegetables.

Except for fish (which I’m allergic to), I planned to sample every regional specialty I had the chance to eat during my 100 Summits journey, so I set aside my lifelong love of horses and reached for a bowl of horsemeat nabe.

With 27 minutes remaining before the restaurant closed, I also helped myself to tempura vegetables, roasted chicken with new potatoes, fresh-made local soba (buckwheat noodles), chicken and apples in creamy sauce, and a bowl of steamed white rice. I cleaned the tray with just enough time for a slice of strawberry cream-cheese cake, a tiny chocolate-orange mousse, and a bowl of honey-soba ice cream dusted with kinako (roasted soybean powder), along with a cup of dark, rich coffee.

When the restaurant closed, I waddled to the front desk and arranged a taxi to the Bandai trailhead in the morning. Afterward, I headed to my room, and barely stayed awake long enough to get a bath before falling into bed.

I woke on June 15 to overcast skies that threatened rain. It was my mother’s 75th birthday, and due to the 16-hour difference between Japan and California, the milestone birthday would begin for her about the time I reached the summit of Mount Bandai.

At least, it would if everything went as planned.

My taxi pulled up at precisely 7:58 a.m., and as it drove me down the curving forest road to the trailhead, I tried to memorize the route. My “taxi Japanese” was more than sufficient to tell a driver where to go and handle payment when the ride was through, but I didn’t feel confident in my ability to arrange a pickup at the end of a possibly-six-hour (but-maybe-longer) hike, so I planned to return to the hotel on foot.

Ten minutes later, I began to reevaluate that decision. We still hadn’t reached the trailhead, and I hadn’t seen another man-made structure on the way. The hike to the hotel would add at least two hours of walking to my day, and likely more.

I began to think the climb was a bad idea.

I debated asking the driver to turn around and take me back to the hotel. I stared out the window, equally frustrated by my lack of confidence and my insufficient language skills. My Japanese was improving daily, but my small vocabulary stranded me at critical moments.

Gravel crunched beneath the wheels as the taxi reached the trailhead parking lot.

As we came to a stop, the driver asked a question in Japanese.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I did not understand.”

He shifted to broken English. “Come back . . . time?” He gestured to the trailhead. “After?”

I could hardly believe my luck.

I did some generous mental math, added an extra 90-minute margin, and converted the number to Japanese. “Jyu go ji?” (3 p.m.?)

The driver made a notation on his clipboard, accepted my fare, and wished me well on Bandai-san.

Delighted to have the transportation problem solved, I completed a hiking notification form—a requirement on many Japanese mountains, to provide the authorities with details about hikers’ clothing, gear, and intended routes in case a person or a group goes missing—and dropped it into the wooden notification box before starting up the trail.

I walked through a misty deciduous forest so green and fragrant that I half-expected to see fairies flittering among the trees. The air felt fresh and cool, but there was no breeze. Despite the clouds, the atmosphere held neither the charge nor the scent that normally heralds rain. A carpet of last year’s fallen leaves crunched softly underfoot. Birds sang in the branches overhead.

The trail meandered through the forest and up a gentle slope covered with interlacing roots that formed a natural set of stairs. Completely alone, I felt connected to the forest and the mountain in a way I never had before.

Forty-five minutes later the aromatic, earthy scent of trees gave way to a sulfurous stench I had learned to associate with live volcanoes. Around a bend in the trail, the forest ended at the entrance to the enormous shallow crater created when the 1888 eruption shattered Bandai’s peak. Volcanic gases bubbled up through cracks beside the trail, smearing the gray volcanic soil with the distinctive, brilliant yellow hue of sulfur.

I crossed the crater, noting the warning signs and barriers erected to keep hikers on the trail. On the opposite side, the path led sharply upward into the forest as the climb began in earnest.

As I ascended, the pungent scent of the volcano slowly faded. The scents of the forest reemerged. A recent rain had left the trail muddy but not slippery enough to make me nervous. It slowed me down, but what I lacked in speed, I made up in persistence.

After three hours on the trail, I climbed the last few stony, treeless yards to the rocky summit of Mount Bandai.

The mist had intensified, concealing the mountain’s famous views behind a curtain of impenetrable white. However, I didn’t care. I laid a stone on the summit cairn in honor of Mom’s birthday and felt grateful for her presence in my life. I wished she was there with me but felt glad that I would see her in exactly a month, when she came to join me for my biggest climb—an overnight ascent of Mount Fuji.

With nothing to look at on the summit, I started down—but didn’t make a beeline for the trailhead. Ten minutes into the descent, I stopped at Bandai’s mountain hut to investigate the delicious scent of roasting mushrooms I had noticed when I climbed past on my way to the mountaintop.

Inside the hut, a woman in her sixties stood behind a wooden counter, selling beverages, snacks, and a wide variety of what my son calls “bits and bobs,” but what my father would have termed—in this case, accurately—“bells and whistles.” Beside the counter, a heavy wooden table ringed with split-log benches offered hikers a place to sit and savor a bowl of soup or drink a cup of coffee.

A sign recommended mushroom soup “with Bandai-foraged mushrooms!” so I ordered myself a bowl.

Three perfectly toasted bread rounds bobbed on the surface of the dark brown soup. Beneath them, tiny flare-capped mushrooms swam in steaming broth. To call the mushrooms “special” would open the door to some inaccurate assumptions, but I doubt I’ll ever taste another mushroom quite as perfect as those foraged caps, or a soup as rich and flavorful.

Afterward, I continued my descent with renewed energy. Tree roots snaked across the trail, creating such perfect natural stairs that it seemed as if Bandai wanted to be climbed. The thought was more than just a passing fancy. Everything about this mountain, from the cool, refreshing mists to the easy trail, suggested a mountain that both recognized and welcomed human visitors.

I returned to the trailhead six hours after starting what the map described as a five-hour hike—a little closer to the posted time than I had managed previously. Even better, I hadn’t felt afraid. In fact, I had enjoyed myself the entire time.

I hoped that, perhaps, this was the breakthrough I’d been waiting for. Maybe overcoming fear wouldn’t be that difficult after all, and maybe the remaining climbs wouldn’t be as hard as I had worried they would be.

As it turned out, the last part was correct.

The coming climbs would not be nearly as difficult as I had feared.

They would be a whole lot worse.

STATION 2: FUJI, DENIED MOUNTAIN TOTAL: 8

I fell in love with Mount Fuji in kindergarten, when I saw a picture of her perfect snowcapped cone in National Geographic magazine. I had longed to see her with my own eyes for more than four decades, but after dozens of unsuccessful attempts, I began to think Japan’s most famous mountain veiled herself in clouds deliberately whenever I approached.

I’m not a superstitious person, but as my failures mounted, her recalcitrance began to feel personal.

Three days after my return from Mount Bandai, as the shinkansen carried me south toward Mount Ibuki, Fuji once again concealed herself behind a cloak of clouds.

Were this a movie-of-the-week, the protagonist would see Mount Fuji only after she proved her worth by climbing to the mountain’s peak.

Were this a novel I was writing, I would never use such a sappy plot device.

However, I had no control over Mount Fuji’s narrative. I simply hoped I’d get to see her—at least once—before the year was through.