Climbing Mt. Fuji

So here is my awaited report on my Mt. Fuji climb. I departed from Utsunomiya to Mito, a large town in Ibaraki located to the South-East of where I am. From there, I would meet up with Natali and the Ibaraki JETs (Japanese English Teachers) who have made plans to climb Mt. Fuji on the weekend of Sept 2nd... convienantly the same weekend I wanted to go. Incidently, Natali is the cool and interesting character I met up at the Yotsukura Beach party a few weeks back and we had remained in contact.


From Mito to Fuji mountain, approx 150 km. Mito is on the top right.

I arrived at Mito on the Friday night to hang out with the JETs, an amazingly cool crew of people. The bunch I'm with had only been in Japan for all of about 1 month but they seem to be getting along just fine. I think it's a thing with international people coming to a foreign country-- they're all extra friendly.

We departed from Mito the next day at 12:30 am on our way to mount Fuji. We had 28 people out for this trip and rented our own tour bus to hit the mountain. Our point man max,

Say hi to Max!

was coordinator for this trip. You'd never think that a big beer drinker like him would be up for a tough mountain climb, but he's a trooper... in more ways than one!

A little about Mt. Fuji

Fuji mountain stands at about 3770 m above sea level. With temperatures at the peak for this season dipping into 2~3 degrees C. The upper most car accessible station (known as the 5th station) is at an elevation of approximatly 2200 m leaving us about 1500 m in elevation to reach. 1.5 km doesn't sound bad when you're walking on flat lands, but going verticle is a different story.

There are several climbing routes up Mt. Fuji depending on what base station you start at. There are 3 base stations each with their own set of stations. For disambiguation, we started on the 5th station of the Kawauchi route. Between the 5th station and the top there are 3 other stations in between, the 6th, 7th and 8th where travellers can make pit-stops, buy supplies and lodge for the night (for $50!).

The climb

The climb takes on the order of 4 to 7 hours depending on the pace you go at. For us, we arrived at the mountain at 7:30 pm, our objective was to catch the rising sun at 4:30 am ish leaving us with plenty of time.

Our 28 people strong group!

What is most often done, is that groups of climbers will climb most of the way out and sit it out there until a few hours before the sun rise. The reasoning is that it's damn cold at the top, so why wait at the top?

We too found it cooler at the bottom of the mountain

Unfortunately for us, the crew of 5 people from our group and the integration of a hiker from a different group of JETs from Hiroshima, we thought that it wasn't cold at all and decided to power through the whole mountain to see how fast we can make it to the top. We did it in about 5 hours. I could hardly keep up with these people and I felt like I just wanted to keel over the entire hike up.

What happened is that as we reached the top the temperature dropped incredibly fast from the 10s of celcius into the single digits making it exceptionally cold. Also as we went further up, the wind suddenly picked up making it really really chilly up there. By the time we made it to the top, we immediately found an outhouse and made our retreat from the harsh environment.

That's us in the outhouse

Sure we might looked all huddled for the picture, but be assured it wasn't for the picture. It was so cold that we had to bunch together to keep ourselves warm using body heat and most of us were shivering like mad. We arrived at the top of the mountain by 12:30 am leaving up with a cold 4 hour wait at the top. Some of us tried to sleep but me and most others, none of us could get a wink.

By 3 am, the legions of other climbers started making their way to the top of the mountain and we were consistently bothered (or perhaps they were bothered by us) by people coming into the outhouse to relieve themselves. After the outhouse got sufficiently stinky, it was time to make our move out of the place and wait for the sunrise.

I bought a $4 shot of hot coffee to get some warmth into my body-- I'm not a coffee drinker but I needed anything hot I could get my hands on. After patient waiting, we were finally greeted by this:

The sunrise over the horizon and clouds

What a sight. After suffering 5 hours on an intense climb, 3 hours wait holed up in an out house, we were greeted by a magnificent sunrise. It was well the struggle.

My moment of victory in the sun!
Me, on the way off the mountain

There is of course more to the story but I could spend forever writing. The long and short after, was that we decended the mountain, taking 3 hours. Decending is far more of a pain then going up because the decending path is different and less steep since going downwards is tougher than going up. We made it back to the 5th station caught our bus and got out of there afterwards.

If you want to see more, I've got a photo album setup with more photos. Feel free to check it out here.

A final word. The Mt. Fuji climb is *not* for the faint of heart -- The climb is long and tiring and you will be brining plenty of supplies throughout the hike. There will be parts where you will have to use your hands to traverse rocky sections. Not only will you have to deal with a tough hike, the air also gets thinner which may lead to altitude sickness. I got mild altitude sickness near the top and felt pretty much like a zombie for most of my time there. If you do decide to climb it, make sure that you are properly read up and prepared!