The push to reach the top of Japan's tallest peak seems to have led one dad to make a choice police are now calling "unacceptable." Japanese media cited by the Independent report that a 48-year-old man left his 7-year-old son on Mount Fuji's Fujinomiya Trail after the boy said he was too tired to continue their family climb on Thursday. At roughly 8,170 feet—about five hours from the summit, at the sixth station—the father allegedly told the child to stay put while he continued up the mountain with his older son. "Wait here," the dad is said to have instructed the boy, per Japan Today.
Around 7:40am, a hut worker found the boy alone on a bench and brought him inside before alerting police, who traced the father to near the eighth station and ordered him back. The child was uninjured and reunited with his family. Because it takes about three hours to hike from the sixth station to the eighth, authorities figured the boy was abandoned at around 4:30 in the morning. Rain was coming down and fog was starting to creep in when the boy was discovered, per WXLV.
Police used the incident to remind hikers to match their plans to the slowest or weakest member of the group, stressing that ditching a child is never an option, even if it means giving up the climb. "I made a rash decision, and I deeply regret it," the father reportedly told officers. Mount Fuji, which tops out at 12,389 feet, draws heavy summer traffic via four main routes, including the Fujinomiya Trail, per the Independent.
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