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Published: September 10th 2006
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Hello everyone!
This is going to be an exciting blog...it is all about how we climbed Mt. Fuji!
There are many ways to climb Mt. Fuji....Some people start in the early afternoon, rest in a hut for a few hours at nightfall, and then continue to climb early in the morning....While some folks start when it gets dark out and just continue to climb all night until they reach the top. Either way though, the main goal is to reach the top of the mountain before the sun rises at around 4:30-5am. We chose the first option to climb, (since I'm not such the "mountain-climbing, nature girl") as we thought it would be a little more relaxing to have the rest in the middle of our climb....and we were REALLY glad we did! Not only did staying in a hut for a little while give our legs a rest and put a warm dinner in our stomachs, but it also gave us the opportunity to do most of our climbing during the day - when the daylight gave us an amazing view of everything around us!
So, we began climbing at about 2-2:30pm from the 5th station of
Mt. Fuji. The stations of Mt. Fuji are pretty much the rest areas that are scattered along the mountain, most having huts where you can purchase food, drinks, and even oxygen if needed! We thought that the distance between the stations would be somewhat equal, thus giving us some sort of idea as to how long it would take us to get to the top at each one, but as we climbed we saw that they were not equally placed along the trail at all. Also, there were two 8th stations (the original and the new), which made things a little confusing. The top of the mountain was kind of considered the 9th station.
As we climbed we experienced mostly great weather! At one point, around the time we started climbing, we had a little bit of light rain....but soon the rain ended and the sun showed itself in blue skies! Luckily we were well-prepared with rain gear and garbage bags to keep our backpacks dry. It was so strange how fast you could see the clouds move up on the mountain...sometimes we could see a cloud coming straight at us from below, and then as fast as it
approached and immensed us, it was gone again.
One really fun thing that we did while we climbed was collect stamps on our "walking stick". We purchased the stick down at the 5th station before we began climbing, and at every station and/or hut, was a different stamp that you could collect in ascending order on your stick. For 200-300 yen ($2-$3 USD), a man would brand the stamp onto the wooden stick with a hot iron poker. In the end, we collected so many - I think almost every single stamp!! The value of this wooden stick is currently about $40 with all of our stamps...but that's a different story altogether...!
At around 6-6:15pm, we had already made it past the 8th station and arrived at our hut: the Fuji-San Hotel. We had climbed pretty quickly, even though we had to stop a lot. Since the air gets more thin and the oxygen more sparse at the top of the mountain, a lot of times we would feel head rushes if we did not stop every so often to "take a breather". We made the most of all of our breaks though....either having a snack for energy,
or just taking in the beautiful scenery.
At Fuji-San Hotel, we changed into some dry clothes and had a nice, chicken curry dinner. It felt so nice to have some warm food, especially since the sun was setting fast and the temperature was getting cooler the higher we climbed. After dinner, we tried to get some sleep. It was only about 8-8:30pm when we laid down in our bunks, but we had to get up by 2am in order to finish our climb and we were exhausted anyway. We both got a few hours of sleep, before waking up around 1:30am. We threw back on our climbing clothes and headed downstairs, pretty much expecting the hut to be empty, but instead saw the exact opposite! All of the climbing traffic (mostly of the people who were pulling the all-night climb) were resting downstairs in our hut, drinking hot tea and trying to warm up!! We quickly brushed past them all and got back on the trail...
When we finally reached the top less than 2 hours later, we put down our bags and anxiously awaited the sunrise. All of the souvenir shops and food stands were just beginning
to open up since it we had reached the top so early, so we huddled together to keep warm in the meantime. The top of the mountain was maybe only about 30 degrees (fahrenheit), very different from the 80-90 degrees it was at the bottom of the Japanese mountain. As soon as everything opened, we purchased warm udon noodles and cans of hot chocolate while we waited for the sun to rise.
When the sun finally rose, we were both breath-taken by the astonishing sight and laughing our asses off at the same time! As the sun slowly rose, and you could see more of it with every couple of seconds, some of the Japanese people sounded like they were having orgasms! "Sequoi, Sequoi" they kept exclaiming over and over again (which means "cool" or "great" in Japanese)!! It really was pretty funny to us!
After the sun rose, we got the final stamps branded onto our walking stick, took some pictures, bought a souvenir, and explored the outer area of the large crater in the middle of the mountain. It was really quite unbelievable to see...especially when remembering that Mt. Fuji is still classified as an ACTIVE
volcano!! Eventually we made our way back down the mountain, which we thought was actually harder on the legs than going up the mountain, even though it only took us a couple hours to get to the bottom (opposed to the 6-7 hours it took us to get to the top)!! We were really careful to take the correct route down the mountain because, as some of our friends who had climbed earlier had warned us....If you take the wrong route going down, you have to go back UP to get back to the correct route!!! (Thanks, Char!) By the time we reached the bottom we both could barely stand up because our legs were so sore, but were so, so happy that we had accomplished our goal - Climbing the TALLEST mountain in all of Japan: MT. FUJI!!!
Love,
Larry & Melanie
JAPANESE FOR THE DAY: "Dono ruto ga ichiban kantan des ka?" - Which is the easiest route?
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Adam
non-member comment
SOO COOOL! I have always wondered what Mt. Fuji looked like close up...now I know. Welcome home as well!