Police not pleased with plan of leaving elementary schooler unattended for hours on Japan’s tallest mountain.

“This summer, I hiked Mt. Fuji with my dad!” sounds like a pretty cool opening for a kid’s how-I-spent-my-summer-vacation essay. The composition gets less heartwarming, though, if it concludes with “And then I got to meet some policemen after he abandoned me on the side of the tallest mountain in Japan.”

And yet, that’s exactly what happened to a 7-year-old boy from Nagoya on Thursday. Early that morning, the boy, his 48-year-old father, and his older brother (a first-year middle school student, making him either 12 or 13 years old) had started their hike up the Fujinomiya Trail. At somewhere around the trail’s sixth of 10 stations on the way to the summit, the younger child became fussy, complaining that he was tired.

At this point, the obvious options would be either to offer some words of encouragement to the tuckered-out tyke, take a break so he could rest and recover his stamina, or, perhaps, to simply accept that taking a 7-year-old on an attempt to summit Mt. Fuji was a flawed plan from the start, and so head home. Instead, Dad decided to tell his younger son “Wait here,” after which he and the older boy continued hiking towards the top of the mountain.

It’s not like the summit was just a hop, skip, and a jump away from where the dad abandoned his flesh and blood, either. According to the Mt. Fuji Climbing Official Website, it takes a little over five hours to hike from the Fujinomiya Trail’s sixth station to the peak, and slightly more than two and a half hours to walk back down there from the top. That means the dad was counting on a 7-year-old to sit tight and keep himself safe on the mountain for at least seven and a half hours, and likely longer once you factor in any time spent by the dad and older brother on rest breaks, taking photos, or admiring the view at the summit.

▼ Approximate ascent hiking times on the Fujinomiya Trail

Thankfully, the younger kid didn’t end up having to do that. At around 7:40 in the morning, a worker at a mountain hut near the sixth station spotted the unattended boy sitting by himself on a bench. The worker invited the boy inside the hut and let him take shelter there while the police were contacted. Once officers arrived, they were able to determine the father’s identity and get in contact with him, at which time he was near the trail’s eighth station, and told him to come back and get his kid.

It’s not clear exactly how long the boy was left unattended for, but, once again going by the Mt. Fuji Climbing Official Website’s estimates, it’s a roughly three-hour hike from the trail’s sixth station to the eighth, meaning he likely abandoned his son sometime around 4:30 in the morning.

Thankfully, the boy was unharmed and was safely reunited with his father. However, when the mountain hut worker found the boy, rain was falling and fog was starting to gather. It’s not known what the weather was like when the father left his son behind, but conditions can rapidly and unpredictably change on Mt. Fuji, sometimes leading to rapid deteriorations of visibility, footing, and other safety factors.

“Even if it means having to give up on climbing the mountain together, leaving a child behind is unacceptable” officers told the father, who, at least, seems remorseful, saying “I made a rash decision, and I deeply regret it.” Following the incident, the police are calling on hikers to be conscious of the dangers of leaving a member of their party behind, reminding those taking to the trails that they should tailor their pace and ambitions to accommodate the member of their group with the lowest amount of stamina.

Source: TBS News Dig, FNN Prime Online, Mt. Fuji Climbing Official Website
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert images: Mt. Fuji Climbing Official Website
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