A 48-year-old father was reprimanded by police after leaving his seven-year-old son alone on a bench near Mount Fuji’s sixth station in dense fog and rain. Mountain hut staff found the child at about 7 a.m. local time on Thursday and alerted police. The child had been given only a soft drink and light food while told to wait.

The father had been climbing the Fujinomiya route toward the summit with his two sons. When the younger child became tired, he told him to remain at the bench and continued upward with the older son. Police said the father was between the seventh and eighth stations, and returning to the child’s location would have taken about three hours.

Police located the father and brought him back. The child became tired and upset after waiting alone for about eight hours. An officer told the man that leaving a child alone in this way was unacceptable, and the father later apologized for what he described as a rash decision. Mount Fuji is 12,389 feet high and has seen several accidents in recent years.