Yamanashi: Access to Mount Fuji’s most popular Yoshida Trail will be restricted from Friday to September 10 if the route becomes dangerously overcrowded, the prefectural government of Yamanashi, central Japan, said Wednesday.

The number of climbers on the trail will possibly be limited to around 4,000 per day, a prefectural official said.

It would be the first restrictions on access to any trails on 3,776-meter Mount Fuji, the tallest mountain in Japan.

The prefectural government will ask local police to implement the restrictions when the Yoshida Trail, located on the Yamanashi side of the mountain, is so crowded that climbers might be endangered. The police will decide which section of the trail will be subject to limits.

The mountain has three other trails, all of which are on its Shizuoka Prefecture side. The Yoshida Trail is a relatively easy route, so about 60 percent of Mount Fuji climbers use it.

Around 83,000 people climbed the mountain on the Yoshida Trail from July 1 through Tuesday, about the same level as four years earlier, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

JIJI Press