Climbing Mt. Fuji

The Japanese have a saying: "It is a wise man who climbs Mt. Fuji. It is a fool who climbs it twice."

I'm not a huge Mountain climber. My two activities that even come close are hiking the last 150 feet up Mt. Bachelor from the chairlift at 9,000 feet, and climbing up Mt. St. Helens... after it blew up, which is cheating since it is 1,300 shorter than it used to be at 8,365 feet. Mt. Fuji is 12,388 feet tall!

MWR puts on trips all through July and August to go climb the mountain. It's a long day, we met up around 1:45 AM to check-in and get on the bus. We then travelled through the morning to get to the 5th station (7,560 ft) at 5:30 AM to start our climb. They give us a climbing stick as part of the package which is used for two things. Help support you as you climb up the mountain and to get brands burned into at various huts up the mountain.

This is not a lonely solitary climb. There are thousands of people climbing Fuji all day long and the infrastructure that has grown to support these people (and make money off them) has grown up. There are supposedly 8 stations, but there are many huts associated with each station. They have food and drink at these huts and usually offer to brand your climbing stick for 200 yen. If you'd like to use the restroom, that'll be another 200 yen, thank you very much.

The trail is very well marked and mostly well developed, but there are still areas where you scramble up a jaggy rock face. Nothing you need climbing gear for, but when all you heard is that it is a long hike to the top, it's a bit disheartening.

The climb is not technically difficult, but as you get higher and higher, the lack of Oxygen really starts to take it's toll. I think I was even further compromised since I had just gotten over a cold. I'd work really hard to get two legs of a switchback completed before sitting down to catch my breath. I was actually getting dizzy at points. When I was sitting down to catch my breath, I almost fell asleep a few times. I'm not sure if it was the lack of Oxygen, or the fact that I got up at midnight to take this trip! :) There were a few times that I'd work so hard for a few feet and then rest and look at how much further I had to go and really wonder if I'd make it in time (we had to make it by 1:00PM or turn around) or at all.

It was a beautiful day for a climb. Allie, a good friend of ours and one of the guides, said they had terrible wind and rain 3 out of the 4 times she had gone so far. Our climb was an exception. The sun was out and the cloud layer generally stayed below where we were (though it was catching up to us, and overtook me for a little while).

As I was getting toward the top, I got a cell phone call from one of our group that had gotten there an hour or so before. I panted that I was within 150 meters and I'd eventually get there.

At a bit before noon, I finally reached the Torii gate that marks the summit! Yes!

The summit is quite well developed with lots of huts, souvenir shops, drink vendors, shrines, and even a post office! I found people from our group, bought a Asahi beer for 600 yen, and sat down to celebrate my accomplishment! After a while, I looked at my phone to see that I had three bars of signal and called Caroline to share the experience! I actually had a better signal on top of the mountain than I did at the bus at the bottom of the climb.

Now it was the long trudge back down to the bus. You go down a different trail than you ascended on. It isn't as technically difficult, but the dirt and gravel make it a bit slippery and despite having my now heavily branded stick, I did hit the ground a couple of times and scraped up my hands a bit. Now my stick has some character building blood stains on it too. :)

I do not intend to try this one again...