The Climb up Mt. Fuji

Climbing Mt. Fuji

There is an ancient Japanese proverb that says, “He who never climbs Mt. Fuji once is a fool. He who climbs Mt. Fuji more than once is an even greater fool.” Well after one of the longest weekends I have endured for awhile, I must say this is very true as I spent about 14 hours climbing up and down Mt. Fuji and about 20 hours on a bus. I had an awesome time, but this was definitely a one time shot. So Mt. Fuji is the largest mountain in Japan at 3,776 meters or 12,388.45 feet. The trip was organized by AJET, which is an independent JET group that often organizes trips around Japan.

The journey to Mt. Fuji in Yamanashi prefecture began on Friday night as I slept over at Peter’s house, as the bus leaving for Mt. Fuji was earlier then my first train into town. That night I didn’t get to sleep till about 2:30am and woke up at 4:30am and made my way to the bus terminal. There were three pickup spots for Mt. Fuji and ours in Kure was the first at 5:20 am. The bus ride to Mt. Fuji lasted from 5:20am to about 6:00pm, with lots of rest stops on the way. Mt. Fuji is pretty far away from Hiroshima, so we managed to travel through about eight prefectures. It was long but we had fun on the bus.From Left to Right: Simon, Brian, Rome, Me, Masato
We arrived at Mt. Fuji around 6pm and grabbed a bite to eat and got ready for the climb. Around 7 pm, five of us from Kure, Simon, Brian, Rome, Masato and myself departed from the 5^th station at 2300 meters. The first part of the climb went really well, though Simon, Masato and I separated from Rome and Brian and went ahead. Both Simon and I wanted to keep a fairy strong pace, so we went really hard and got up to the 8^th station at 3,350 meters in about 2 hours. The recommended time is about 2.5 hours so we made really good time. However, we soon realized that if we kept on our pace, since we started at 7.00, we would be at the top of the mountain by 12, and then we would have had to sit around for 5 hours doing nothing at the top. Therefore, we decided to slow down and rest a bit.

During the climb up one of the funniest things was our buddy Masato, both Simon and I felt really good climbing the first 3 stations, but Masato seriously looked like he was going to die. He kept on repeating that he “had to go at his own pace” and at certain parts he had the funniest walk that I dubbed “dead man walking,” because it really looked like he was on death row with his slow walk and their was so much pain on his face. The reason why was that the higher you got, the more the altitude affected you (reminded me a lot of when I was in La Paz, the highest city in the world and got altitude sickness). Luckily, at this point both Simon and didn’t get altitude sickness like Masato, who was a trooper and kept on pace.

So we made our way to the 8^th station and decided to rest for awhile and spent about 30 minutes eating snacks and gazing at the stars. The climb at night was gorgeous and I have never seen the big dipper that close. We just sat and chatted and then met up with a few more of the 47 JETs from Hiroshima that made the climb. After stopping for a bit, the cold really started to kick in. At the beginning I was just climbing with a tank top, but as we got closer to the top it started getting really cold. I put on my layers that I brought with me and we went into one of the rest stations and had some warm miso soup. We sat around for a bit, then made our ascent to the main 8^h station and then decided that we should get some rest to kill time. Both Simon and I thought that we had found a warm spot, and decided to take a nap. However, about 10 minutes later we realized how wrong we were as all our extremities started to freeze and we curled up into fetal position while screaming about how cold it was. We sat there for what seemed like forever until the rest station hotel/restaurant opened and we went inside and got a bowl of warm noodles, that literally felt like heaven. Oh we could have actually gotten a futon in one of the huts and slept, but they were charging a ridiculous amount of money, so the three of us decided that it really wasn’t worth it. Once we finished our noodles we started the last 2000 meter climb.

This part was by far the most brutal, a total opposite of the first 3^rd of the mountain. The time was about 3am, and at his point the mountain was full of climbers and it was pretty much gridlock. So the last leg took awhile to climb and at this point after resting, we were cold, tired and at this height is when I started getting a bit of a headache from the altitude, as your body starts to lack oxygen due to the thin air. However, Simon and I made our way up- Masato had gone with another group- and got to the top a little past 4 am. The interesting part of the last climb was how every one had a flash light, as it was pitch black and most people didn’t say a word while climbing, so you had tons of people all marching along a path up a mountain looking like ants or the Orc army from Lord of the Rings. Really eerie to look back and just see lines of lights leading up to the mountain.

So Simon and I made it to the top finally and just then we caught up with Brian, Rome wasn’t feeling to well and decided to rest at one of the stations. The three of us found a spot and watched the sunrise at a little past 5. It really was breathtaking to see the sun appear at the horizon then light up the sky. Definitely a moment I will remember. We stayed at the top of Mt. Fuji for about an hour, even though it was absolutely freezing with the wind chill, and even colder as I somehow managed to lose one glove. We took lots of pictures and met up with Masato who also made it to the top. Around 6ish we made our way back down the mountain. Going down was in some ways harder as you took a different route that consisted of plan steep dirt paths that were really tough on your legs. However, Masato was a beast going down as he mastered this interesting like trot where he shakes his ass and manages to almost run down the mountain. I managed to take a video of it and it still cracks me up seeing it. We got back to the bus and made our way to an onsen and soaked out all the dirt and some of the fatigue from the climb. Everyone on the bus was exhausted and we had a quite bus ride back to Hiroshima-ken. Overall, it was a fun and challenging. I took some awesome pictures and had a real good time laughing at Masato and even freezing my ass off at the top. Definitely got lots of good memories and stories to tell and isn’t that what its all about? Canada conquers Mt.Fuji!