Japan’s killer mountain

Press, 29 February 1984, Page 17

Japan’s killer mountain

From

Keith Stafford

in Doai, Japan

Just occasionally a gap appears in the swirling winter snow-clouds obscuring the face of Tanigawadake, the most dangerous mountain in Japan and one of the most deadly in the world. Then you can see the jagged icy rocks towering into the mist. They look murderous and they are. More than 700 Japanese climbers have fallen from them to their death in the last 50 years. That is more than ten times the number of lives lost on Everest. All told, there have been 141 climbing fatalities in the Mount Cook National Park. The latest victim, a Tokyo clerk, lies deep beneath the snow at the foot of the precipice. His body will probably not be recovered until the spring thaws the deep valley which leads up to the rock-face. Yet climbers come here in the thousands, winter and summer, to test themselves against the 1963 metre walls, tackling routes like the “valley of the ghosts” or the “wall of hunters.” For Tanigawadake, despite its bloody history, remains the most popular mountain climb in the country. Takamichi Kawabe, a 28-year-old mountain guide who has climbed the mountain 30 times, says: “The number of people who go there is extraordinary. In the peak summer climbing season there can be 200 people on the walls at the same time. “On the most popular routes queues develop. You can arrive early in the morning at the bottom and not start climbing until the early afternoon.” Tanigawadake is popular partly because it is only a couple of hours by express train from the heart of Tokyo, but that also contributes to its deadly reputation. Kawabe, who broke a backbone on his first Tanigawadake climb, says that many young climbers work on Saturday, catch a night express, walk to the face in the early hours of Sunday morning, then begin to climb. “The Saturday night 10 o’clock train is packed with climbers. It’s like an average rush hour morning in the city. They don’t sleep on the train and then start feeling drowsy at a dangerous point on the wall.” Another mountain guide, Shohei Wada, says: “There are people who buy climbing equipment in Tokyo on Friday and arrive at the wall on Saturday, and there’s not a thing anyone can do.”

Wada once had to turn back from a climb of Everest 1468 feet from the top. He trained for his Everest attempt by climbing Tanigawadake, and once broke two of his ribs.

"I took the wrong course up the face and couldn’t find a way up and couldn’t see a way down. The exhaustion finished me. I fell 40 metres,” he says. Inexperience is the biggest danger on the mountain. The weather in the valley can also change quickly, often pounding climbers with sleet and stinging cold rain and forcing them to spend a night in the open. Wada has climbed Tanigawadake about 100 times and says it is at its

most dangerous in winter when sheet ice and heavy snow cover danger points and avalanches are frequent. “In the summer lots of weeds grow in the crevices, the rock is rotten and crumbles, and lots of new climbers don’t know about the dangerous pitons (steel spikes hammered into tiny cracks in the rock to hold climbers’ ropes). “A lot of pitons have already been smashed into the rock but you can’t rely on the work of climbers before you. Old pitons rust and can slip out without warning when you are hanging from them on a rope." The Japanese police have created a special unit near the

base of Tanigawadake to mount rescues and carry away the bodies — nine of them last year. Yoshiaki Takahashi, chief of the eight-man rescue squad, says there are local government regulations ordering would-be mountaineers to file an application to climb. Those who don’t apply face a $64 fine. But Wada says: “Laws can’t prevent climbing accidents. Climbing is a sport for individuals. They and laws don’t meet.” Takahashi says the death toll on the mountain since records started in 1931 is 704, which compares with the 61 lives lost on Everest. “Since the climbing ordinance was introduced the number of deaths each year has dropped.” he says, “but climbers still come here badly equipped. They are reckless, inexperienced, and overconfident. “They arrive alone. And they die alone.”