Ten middle-aged and elderly climbers were rescued Wednesday near the top of Mount Nishi-Azuma, which straddles the border of Yamagata and Fukushima prefectures, after spending two nights in a snowbound hut, police said.
Yamagata Prefectural Police rescued the group, including three women, shortly after 8:40 a.m. close to the top of the 2,035-meter mountain, where a blizzard had reduced visibility to just 20 meters.
Members of the group used a cellphone to alert police around 1 p.m. Tuesday after one of the members, Fumio Hoshino, a 55-year-old company employee from Fukushima Prefecture, suffered frostbite.
The party, led by Kazuhito Takahashi, 59, from Sayama, Saitama Prefecture, started climbing the mountain Saturday and was due to return home Sunday, but bad weather forced them to stay in a mountain hut for two nights. They began descending the mountain Tuesday.
Police mobilized 46 officers to search for the climbers.