That was the most miserable I have ever been in my whole entire life so far. It was also the best experience ever.

When I was ten, we went on a cycling trip to the New Forest, camping in the middle of nowhere. For one reason or another, we couldn’t take the bikes, so we kept the same itinerary, but did it on foot, in the pouring rain. My mum said it was not rubbish, it was ‘character building’. Now I understand…

I really need to improve my footage capture. It’s those moments where filming is the last thing on my mind when it really should be rolling. But I’m sure I’ll get used to that in time.

Haha! I just found this page dating from the 14th of November 2006.

Good job I kept that up-to-date, then.

More on Fuji later - I’m in the process of editing the video diary. But suffice to say we made the summit. Along with only 2 other people - US Army chaps no less - from our coach of 50, and 8 other people who’d done most of the climb the day before.

Rather than the promised HOARDS of people, it was a rather exclusive crowd up there in the gale-force winds and zero visibility at 4:30 in the morning on Friday July 4th.

The weather was the most hideous I’ve ever seen in my life, and we ALMOST DIED* several times.

(*may be an exaggeration)

But like I said… more later.

Mount Fuji, with Ben Nevis superimposed (poorly) in the foreground at scale height.

Ben Nevis really was just a little warm-up.

Not long to go until Project Fuji comes together.

I really can’t wait to get out in nature, away from the crowds, away from the trappings of the city…

D’oh!

In case you’re wondering, yes, those are vending machines on the summit of Mount Fuji.

(Photos by Chris Birchall)

Made it.

More later…

So that time of year has come around… dark evenings, cold, post-Christmas blues… it finally got me and I have absolutely no inspiration for a blog.

So let’s have a look what’s coming up in the not-too-distant future…

Birthday and House-Warming

My birthday, which I always look forward to through winter - and this year, it’ll be combined with a house-warming party for my most lovely lady.

I’ve home-made a bottle of Salmari - that’s vodka with Tyrkisk Peber salmiakki dissolved into it. It’s a rather dangerous drink because its sweet liquoricyness causes you to forget you’re drinking alcohol at 40% by volume.

Finland

A trip to freezyland. Just a short one, but I’ll be going to Helsinki for the first time ever (in my 7th trip to Scandinavia). It’ll also be my first Scandinavian capital city. And H’s first trip to Scandinavia.

And it’ll include seeing old friends from previous trips.

And going ice swimming (in theory).

There is a temperature gauge and a couple of links on the top right pertaining to this trip.

Scotland

We’re off up to the top of the British Isles’ highest peak in May. There are only about 150 metres difference between the Ben Nevis ascent and mount Fuji - mainly because Ben Nevis is climbed from 30m above sea level, whereas you begin walking from about half-way up Fuji. It’ll be a perfect warm-up for the real thing.

We might have a little potter round bits of Scotland on the way back, hopefully visiting the Falkirk Wheel, which is one of those feats of engineering I feel the need to visit. By the power of Archimedes, it can carry up to 600 tonnes of canal boats up and/or down 24 metres using only the power of eight kettles. Neat stuff.

A Wedding

H’s brother is getting married. Hooray!

Japan

Wow. What can I say? One of those places that was always on my “I’d love to, but don’t think I ever will” list. We’re mostly flexible on plans so far, but the trip will certainly include an ascent of Mt. Fuji, and an amount of time in Tokyo.

Cropredy

If that’s not enough, it’s then a return to Cropredy. I enjoyed it so much last year, that we’re planning to do it all over again. Despite the completely unacceptable facilities.

and…

…that only gets us as far as mid-August.

Funny… those blues have just blown away.

…is go.

Oh yeah! We’ll be there for the first day of official climbing season 2008 and I am quite excited.

(that is a lie, I am more excited than you can imagine)

Wow, what an experience! I now know what people mean when they say ‘be prepared’… more on that later.

But first… a quick summary. Great weather - would have been very different were it wet. Tiring, but wonderful views. A highly recommended bit of the world to go to. Much better when off the beaten track, parts along the Penine Way were pretty busy.

Unlike any other walks we’ve done thus far, the one we did today had no time for warm-up - a short uphill road leads to a steep cobbled track, then into a clough - at the top of which, we’ve climbed 275m in just 2.4 miles (average 10% grade). A very short break of a few tens of metres, then the next climb at 16% grade for just under half a mile taking us another 100m towards the sky.

The good thing is that having completed the climb, the walk is then pretty level for the next 4.5 miles.

Once on the plateau, we went off the track to find bits of plane - or more accurately, two planes which mysteriously crashed 50 miles off course in 1954. It is thought they were maybe descending for a visual check below the cloud level and met some Cumulo Gritstone. We didn’t find that many large pieces, but the area over which they’re spread is incredible - as, I guess, you would expect.

Next was Charged Rock, where the Aetherians of Derbyshire will be picked up by aliens in 2015. Or something like that.

Then Kinder Downfall, or Kinder Trickle-Unworthy-Of-Mention-Were-It-Not-For-The-Big-Gorge-Cut-Out-By-It as I shall now call it. Apparantly in wet weather, it can be very exciting, and in wet, windy weather there are times when every single drop of water trying to flow over the edge is blown back up on to the moor.

Then came the very best bit of the walk ever, and maybe the best bit of any walk ever. We followed the River Kinder upstream for a mile or two, walking on its bed most of the time until we ended up in a narrow gully with 12 to 15 feet of peat towering on each side - very cool, and not a soul about (well, ok - we saw two people down at the wide end). It was strange to walk so far into the moor while having absolutely no view of it, so when we surfaced at the source of the river (which was totally dry by now), there was a completely desolate landscape with absolutely no features to work from. Using the GPS (could have used the compass but was lazy), we took a bearing and found our way to the summit cairn. Another peak bagged!

After the river, it was a trek across ‘grough’ country. Really hard work. Groughs are 2 to 15 feet deep channels in the peat. If you need to go along one, you’re fine. If you need to cross them, you have to go down and up. Down and up. Down and up. At the bottom, you can’t tell which way to come up to stay on the correct bearing. If we were doing the walk in mist without the GPS working it could have taken ages. Thankfully, we had a visual landmark by now, and a GPS waypoint to head for. Still, we were very glad when we arrived at Pym’s Chair.

Then it was pretty much straightforward to aim along the side of the hill and down gently for a few miles, and back to the car for a well deserved sit with bare feet in the breeze.

Now for the bit about preparation…

Just after Pym’s Chair, we came across a young couple, probably German, but that’s irrelevant. They asked us where Glossop was, so I pulled the map out of its case, unfolded it, worked it out and showed them. You see, they’d decided to tackle the walk from Edale to Glossop with… an A5 AA Motoring Map. I understand now when people tell me “You’ve thought about it, so you’re prepared”. As someone who’s more likely to over-prepare, I just couldn’t believe they were up there with lunch and a road map, and that’s it. Wow.

Right… map, profile and stats:

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click for big

Distance: 9.3miles
Total ascent: 547m
Time taken: 4 hours, 27 minutes

As we all know, the Snowdon climbing - while good in itself - is part of a bigger thing; the plan to climb Mt. Fuji (a little rant related to that coming up at the end). Tonight I made a comparison between Fuji and Snowdon. Now I have experience of a real mountain, it makes more sense to work in relative terms just as I compared Snowdon to the Cat+Fiddle walk.

Here it is:

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You’ll notice the red line is where altitude sickness can kick in. That’s quite near the start of the trail. I think a little more practice will be required before the trip.

And on to the rant… do you know how many times, I’ve seen the phrase “affectionately called ‘Fuji-san’” during my research? Many times. That’s how many. And do you know why this is a rant? It’s because there’s nothing affectionate about the name ‘Fuji-san’. The characters making its name are 富士山 - that’s 富士 ‘fuji’ and 山 ’san’. You see ’san’? That’s the character for ‘mountain’. It’s a picture of a mountain. Look… 山. A mountain.

I think it’s all those people who watched the Karate Kid who noted that Mr. Miyagi calls Daniel ‘Daniel-san’. In that case, yes, it’s moderately affectionate (but mostly just polite). And the characters for ’san’ in this case are さん.

It’s like saying Durham is so called because of the stupid pigs there.

San 山. It’s the word for mountain.

And while we’re on the subject… yes ‘yama’ is also a word for a mountain. And the character is also 山. However, Fujiyama is all wrong. So don’t do it, ok? It’s complicated.

Ok… we made it. Four hours and fifty minutes (and 3500 calories burned) from Pen-Y-Pass car park and back via the summit of Snowdon. The weather forecast posted at the bottom promised 50mph winds (with 60mph gusts) and heavy rain. Not the sort of day you want to go up a mountain. However, standing in the car park, the wind wasn’t too high, and the clouds, while covering the summit, were high enough that we figured we should give it a go. The plan was, however wet or miserable it became we’d carry on. If it became unsafe, we’d turn back. As it turned out, the rain wasn’t too strong, and the winds were almost non-existant.

Well, I have to say - what beautiful countryside! And the weather treated us very well - no rain on the way up, and we didn’t enter the clouds until about 2/3 of the way up. Towards the summit, though, the drops of mist became larger and larger, turning into rain. We reached the summit - the highest point in England and Wales and walked up the steps to the top of the cairn, looking at the wonderful views it was telling us we could see - Ireland? Nope… mist. This peak? Nope… mist. That peak? Nope… seagull in mist. After that, we headed via a geocache back down the route we came. About 1/3 of the way down we were still in cloud, but found another geocache and stopped briefly for lunch. After that, it was waterproof trousers on (the jackets had gone on long ago) and the slog back down to the car park. In all, the cloud probably followed us about 2/3 of the way down the mountain, definitely worse visiblity than the way up. Overall a great trip. I’m sure that anyone who is reasonably fit and savvy could do the Miner’s Track with no problem. The track did actually disappear a couple of times, but given enough scouting, or waiting for people coming down, we found the path up easily. Coming back down was much easier to follow the track.

There follows an elevation profile. Our ‘training’ walk in Cheshire is shown superimposed to the same scale, with lowest points matched to give some idea of the scale difference:

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An aerial view with some waypoints:

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And a 3d view of the same:

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A photo from around the ‘Rest 2′ mark on the ascent. Note that the nearer lake is some 200 metres higher up the hillside than the further lake. Difficult to comprehend unless you’ve just walked up to it.

click for full-size

After Snowdon, it was back to the hotel for a quick bath, then off to the seaside in Llandudno for fish and chips, and to dip toes in the sea at the lowest point in Wales (some 1,085 m or 3,560 ft lower than we had been just six hours earlier), then back to the hotel for sauna, swim and bed. Ok… it was sauna, swim, bit more sauna, swim again, a little more sauna… bit of a swim, maybe sauna, swim, shower, bed. Did I mention we stayed at a great hotel where we had private use of a sauna and pool?

Brilliant trip - it gets the mind going for the next challenge now… any suggestions? (Don’t say the Three Peaks… not yet)