father leaves boy on Mount Fuji after a 7-year-old from Nagoya was told to wait near the sixth of 10 stations while his father and older brother kept climbing. A worker at a mountain hut found the child alone at around 7:40 in the morning and sheltered him while police were contacted.
Fujinomiya Trail sixth station
The boy was hiking the Fujinomiya Trail early on Thursday morning with his 48-year-old father and an older brother who is a first-year junior high school student. Near the sixth station, the child said he was tired. His father told him to stay there and continued toward the summit with the older brother.
That left the 7-year-old on a route where the climb from the sixth station to the peak takes a little over five hours, while walking back down from the top to the sixth station takes slightly more than two and a half hours. The boy was found while rain was falling and fog was starting to gather.
Mount Fuji Climbing timing
The mountain hut worker near the sixth station spotted the boy sitting alone on a bench and brought him inside before police arrived. Police identified the father and reached him when he was near the trail’s eighth station, then told him to come back and get his child.
Police later reunited the boy with his father. The child was unharmed.
The sequence left the father farther up the mountain while his younger child waited alone below, and it turned on a simple decision: stop and turn back, or keep going without the 7-year-old. Police chose the first option for him when they ordered him to return to the sixth station.
