European man lost consciousness during Mt. Fuji hike with his son.

The Fujinomiya Trail, one of the most popular routes to the top of Mt. Fuji, opened for this year’s climbing season on July 10. Just one week later, Mt. Fuji had its first death of the 2026 season, and now a foreign traveler attempting to summit Japan’s tallest mountain has died as well.

On July 17, a 65-year-old man from Nara was making the Fujinomiya Trail ascent as part of a tour group. At around 6:30 in the morning, as the group was continuing upward between the eight and ninth of the 10 stations along the trail, the man fell and struck his head against a hard surface. Emergency rescue and medical services were called for, but the blunt impact resulted in the man’s death.

Four days later, on July 21, a 58-year-old Swiss man was hiking along the same trail with his son in the afternoon. They stopped to rest in a mountain hut near the Fujinomia Trail’s new seventh station, but while they were there the father lost consciousness. His son alerted the hut’s staff and they summoned the Shizuoka Prefectural Police’s mountain rescue team, who reached the hut shortly before 4 p.m. Using a defibrillator, they were able to resuscitate the man enough to temporarily restart his breathing and evacuated him to a hospital, but he was pronounced dead by doctors upon arrival. It’s unclear what caused the man, who had suffered no injuries during the hike, to lose consciousness, and the medical investigation into his death is ongoing.

No deaths occurred on Mt. Fuji during the 2025 climbing season, but this pair of tragic events, both coming when the hikers were in the company of others and looking forward to a shared feeling of accomplishment and unforgettable memory once they reached Mt. Fuji’s peak, underlines how deceptively safe the mountain can appear. Despite its height, there are no vertical, rope-and-pickax-style sections on the major trails to Mt. Fuji, making trekking along the trails feel more like hiking than mountain climbing. The sparse vegetation along the way makes it easy to stick to the trail and avoid getting lost, and the fact that so many people hike the mountain that there are daily capacity limits for the trails can further shift the perception of Mt. Fuji from intimidating natural landscape to outdoor amusement park attraction.

The trip to the top, though, is a serious challenge that comes with potentially serious dangers, and in the wake of the two deaths, the Shizuoka Prefectural Police are calling for renewed caution among hikers and asking that they turn back or call for help when they start to feel any uncertainty about their physical condition or changing weather making it unsafe for them to continue their ascent.

Source: FNN Prime Online, Yahoo! Japan News/Daiichi TV
Top image: Pakutaso
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