Super Cub Volume 1 Chapter 31 - Mount Fuji

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Reiko returned to the mountain lodge at the 5th Station on her scratched-up Postal Cub.

The Cub didn’t seem to be as damaged as Reiko herself. The rearview mirror, which wasn’t necessary here, was broken, and the levers were slightly bent.

As soon as she returned, Reiko resumed her work of loading the truck that carried supplies up to the summit. The store owner, seeing her, asked her a question as he touched the scratched-up Postal Cub.

“Why are you doing this?”

The reason Reiko decided to climb Mount Fuji on her Postal Cub was because of a book written by a motorcycle adventurer.

According to the book, in a time when environmental protection regulations and mountaineering etiquette were more lenient than today, climbing Mount Fuji on motorcycles was a popular activity. Apparently, some of today’s most famous off-road racers and motor journalists have climbed Mount Fuji on the bulldozer trail with their motorcycles on weekends.

From the 5th Station, it would take about twenty minutes to get to the top, which would take several hours on foot, and less than five minutes to get down.

Only a few high-performance off-road bikes could climb the steep slopes of rubble. Lightweight motocross bikes and trial bikes lacked the absolute power and would get stalled, or even fall over, by their tires getting caught by pebbles. 

These accounts had led Reiko to start scouring the internet, old off-road motorcycle magazines, and mountaineering magazines that contained articles about motorcycles. At the shop she frequented, where there were many veteran off-road riders, she had listened to stories from those who have actually climbed the mountain.

As a result of gathering all this information, Reiko began to think that maybe her Cub could also do it.

This turned into conviction when she came across parts that could greatly enhance her Postal Cub’s off-road performance.

Not the tuning parts for Super Cubs produced by various manufacturers, but for the CT110 Hunter Cub, an off-road vehicle for Cub export.

Larger diameter tires than those of a Postal Cub for rough terrain, and a 110cc engine that had been heavily tuned by the previous owner. An undercarriage and drive components.

Changing parts was an easy thing to say, but it was difficult work to somehow install parts from a vehicle that was also a Cub but with different specifications by modifying and making the installation parts herself.

When the vehicle, which looked like a combination of a Postal Cub and a Hunter Cub, was completed, Reiko was convinced that she would be able to climb Mount Fuji.

Now that the special Cub was completed, the way was open for another problem: climbing permits.

She got a part-time job loading cargo at a mountain lodge located at Mount Fuji Subashiri 5th Station. Reiko, who had almost no mountain climbing experience, frankly told the owner at the interview for the job, where most of the applicants were university climbing club members, that she wanted to climb Mount Fuji on her bike.

The old owner, who had lost all his toes to frostbite and had retired from mountaineering, hired her out of a relatively large pool of applicants and even made up a job for her to check the route.

It was a job she did early in the morning, when there were no climbers yet, and she had to check the road surface and weather conditions on the bulldozer trail with her bike before driving the truck that would transport supplies and the sick. The job ended when she got to the 6th Station, but she could make some changes as long as it didn’t interfere with loading the cargo. For example, the scope of the check could be expanded based on her judgment at the scene.

After she was hired, Reiko put her Cub together and started working at the Subashiri Trail that began from the Fuji Sengen Shrine in Shizuoka Prefecture. She lived in an apartment dorm at the foot of the mountain and worked as a loader, a job that didn’t suit a girl. And then, every morning, she climbed Mount Fuji on her Cub.

Reiko answered the owner, who asked her why she was doing this.

“I just want to know. If I’m someone who can surmount that.”

Reiko pointed to the tallest mountain in Japan, which she could see even as she attended high school in Hokuto.

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