We had a big cycle ahead of us to get to Wakkanai, and a time limit of about 3pm for our ferry. So I left pretty darn early, around 5am. At the seicomart I met up with Maria and met two germans also cycling Japan, and then saw the other American guys at the other seicomart in town. At my second convenience store I saw the germans again. We left at a similar time and I tried to keep pace with them, but they were lightning fast. Today I had backwind on my side and was absolutely flying up the coast. I had finished my 115km to Wakkanai before midday! Because of this, we had so much time before our ferry. I got a coffee and some Nepalese curry, then met the others later at McDonalds. From there we checked out a second hand shop where Nick got a thing I can only describe as an ancient religious stake found in a dungeon. He said it was for his brother. The ferry to Wakkanai was long and I mostly chilled on my own. Towards the end I had a nice conversation with Sam about his journey at college. At Rishiri we had a crazy idea... what if we don't sleep just hike the mountain tonight? Sam had soft-pitched it as a joke, but I said "why not guys?" So we did it. We had a brief hour sleep until 10:30pm then started our hike. It started with spirits high, borrowing the light from others head torches as my bike light was pretty shitty at illuminating the way. I was also carrying my water bottle in the other hand. The hike was BIG. And DANGEROUS. Once we got to alpine territory, the trees dipped and it was insanely windy. If I slipped to the side, I couldn't see if I would fall on ground or down a 1000m death drop due to the darkness. I didn't want to find out. It was also super wet, we were basically in the clouds. At 3am we arrived at the false summit. There was a lodge here that we went in for a little bit to relax. We were there for 45 minutes, I fell asleep for 20. Then we continued to the summit. More climbing in clouds, but now a small amount of light was cracking through and I could see some of the ground in front of me without the aid of my light. It was another 400 or so metres of elevation to climb. We got at the top at 4:45ish, bang on sunrise time. But we saw no sunrise, only clouds. We stayed up for 2 minutes, took a couple photos, and started the hike down now. By now I was absolutely destroyed. I was hobbling down this mountain. I also really needed to poo, so horribly that it was affecting any enjoyment of the hike. I eventually found a place behind that previous lodge, where I could go to the toilet off the side of the mountain. Thank god. It took maybe 2-3h to hobble back down the mountain. Today I had cycled ~125km and hiked up over 1700m of mountain with almost no sleep. I ran into Sam towards the bottom, and we both shared how wrecked we felt. Maria was pretty stoic about it, and Ben seemed absolutely fine. They are insane. I made it back to my stuff somewhere between 8-9am. I was so happy to be back, and to fill my water bottle.