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By Adam Clark
28K: Carving down Mt. Fuji | |
Click here to see the video of this epic run produced by Terabyte Station To see Mt. Fuji firsthand is to be awed and humbled. At 12,388 feet (3776m) it towers above the surrounding mountains, dwarfing even the most prominent. Its perfect cone has made it the most photographed and painted volcano in the world. What you don’t hear about is the 26-km (16+ miles) two-lane auto road that runs from the Fifth Station down that perfect slope all the way to the entrance gate. Most people just drive up, but we saw it and knew it would be a lot more exciting to ride down—on longboards | To put this in perspective, in Europe, after a descent of one of the longest routes in the Alps, a longboard manufacturer named Aluflex used a map of the run as their deck graphic for their D308 model. That impressive run was 16 kilometers long. In Akita Prefecture, three weeks before the Fuji run, I found a 2.2-kilometer, 7-degree screamer. Part way down my third run I had to stop and shake out the muscles in my legs. I wondered ominously about Mt. Fuji—thirteen times as long.
| | We arrived at the Fifth Station in the late afternoon. I set about making dinner while Flash was out for a few runs on the stretch of road next to our camp. Chris and Jeff from Terabyte Station (the video team) were higher up taking time-lapse footage of the sunset. The Vegetarian, Kris, was making the salad. This left only Racer X unaccounted for when a dark flash raced past the window of my V Dub camper. | 
Flash on upper Fuji
| Racer X is probably best known for his photography work for Outdoor Japan and leading trips with Japan Adventures. On this occasion we found him dressed in a Ninja suit, complete with hood, tearing down the road outside the van on his 44” Lush Bahari. I laughed, of course, but imagine the irony. Here we were two Swedes, three Americans and a Canadian getting ready to film/skate down the holy icon of Japan and to complicate the cultural gray area further, Racer X was kicking it around in a Ninja suit. Somehow, with what we were doing, it factored in as acceptable.
Like the Ninja suit, many other variables were noticeably out of our control. Regarding the task at hand, we would be well above cloud level for the first 12k, but then descending through a variety of climatic zones. Urathane skateboard wheels grip dry pavement exceptionally well and consume minimal energy as they roll over hard surfaces but are notoriously bad with moisture. We had no way of knowing how much moisture we would see the following morning. We also couldn’t rule out that one of us could go down hard scrapping the run for a trip to the hospital. Then there was the question of legality.
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Flash on upper Fuji
Photo by Racer X
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Ninja (X) on Fuji
Photo by Fred Burvall
| Try as I did to find something relevant to this event on the resources about Mt. Fuji, I found nothing. As a group, we decided to use an adage that saw me well through to college, “It is better to beg forgiveness, than ask permission.” I rehearsed all the apologetic phrases I knew in Japanese as I walked up the road during our night skate in the headlights of Chris’s car. In actuality, not one of us was worried about getting in trouble. If anything we were worried about getting stopped part way down.
Before we had even made the first descent, a longskate competition called Style Sessions, held annually in New York City, had billed an all expense paid trip to Mt Fuji, on our recommendation, as their grand prize for the 2005 winner. With the competition just three weeks away, we knew they would be hard pressed to find another option with this kind of draw if the run failed. There was no way this could be complete unless we skated all the way to the bottom.
|  |  | Flash & Fuji in the clouds
Photos by Racer X | Pressure aside, when we finished breakfast at 4:45am the following morning all that was left to do was skate. This I knew we could handle. With Jeff and Chris ahead in the film vehicle, Flash, X, Kris and I pushed off from the Fifth Station.
The initial 12k was as incredible as the views. Starting above the clouds, smooth pavement wound its way through a dry, clear alpine region of lava rock and brush. I remember seeing X, Kris, and Flash ahead swinging like pendulums across the road. I threw out a slide to skim off speed and wondered if I was dreaming. We had just started and had already logged 6k of uninterrupted carving. It was almost too perfect. | | Yoyogi Skate Night | Interested Tokyo Residents, check the OJ Message Board for the next OJ Skate Night in Yoyogi Koen. Don’t own a board? No Problem. Plenty to go around.
Don’t live in Tokyo? Post a message and find other longskaters in your area. |
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Adam playing in the grease
Photo by Fred Burvall
| We briefly stopped at the Fourth Station but were soon itching to get going again. We knew we needed to get as far down the mountain as possible before the construction vehicles started coming in for work and our run became public knowledge. At our re-entry point, a spectacular toe-side curve greeted us and we took it aggressively gaining speed.
At cloud level, things got hairy but we didn’t expect Mt Fuji would be a skate in the park. The greasy, synthetic salt substance they through down to keep away the ice had mixed with the morning dew and the motor oil from years of tourist buses presenting us with some dicey skating. In any normal situation, if you hit pavement like this you might hang out and practice some slides, or maybe save your bearings by carrying your board. We were here without those options. We had one goal in mind, the bottom, and just kept skating through nearly eight kilometers of grime.
|  |  | | Kris or Elvis? | A done deal | | Photos by Fred Burvall |
We eventually broke out of the slick and set again into a rhythmic series of standing “S” turns, happy to be out of a downhill stance. X (now wearing an apron he had picked up from a store owner with a picture of Mt Fuji on it) spotted a sign and yelled out, after nearly 20k and an hour and fifteen minutes of hard carving, that we were two-thirds down. My legs were burning but I had a 180mm smile on my face because there was still so much left.
We saw more traffic during the final few kilometers than we had seen all morning and while a few hit their brakes, most just kept going. When we came to a stop at the bottom, the sun was beginning to beat down, the birds were already going about their daily routines, and not a soul was there to greet us. My well-rehearsed apologies proved unnecessary and we were left to relish in the satisfaction of having completed the first known descent of Mt. Fuji by longboard, arguably one the longest continuous longboard descents in the world.
 | | The crew (from left, clockwise): Adam, Kris, Jeff, Flash, X & Chris |
The equipment
The Evangelist – Deck: Motion Big Fish, Trucks: Randal RII 180mm, Bearings: Bones Swiss, Wheels – Kryptonic Classics 76mm 78a
Racer X – Deck: Lush Bahari, Trucks: Independent 149’s, Bearings: Some old In-line skate bearings, Wheels - Kryptonic Classics 76mm 78a
Flashy Flash - Deck: Motion Big Fish, Trucks: Randal RII 180mm, Bearings: Bones Swiss, Wheels – Kryptonic Kripgrip 66mm 88a
The Vegetarian – Deck: Rayne Forge, Trucks: Randal RII 180mm, Bearings: Bones Reds, Wheels: Gravity Sliders 73mm 94a
Dedicated to Alex Showell who first shared this idea with me two years ago. I’m glad we got it done and just wished he were still in Japan to join us. Note: The views and opinions expressed by writers and columnists on Outdoor Japan are not necessarily those of Outdoor Japan Y.K. and the activities and opinions expressed are not officially endorsed by Outdoor Japan Y.K.
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