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Published: September 3rd 2006
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Last weeked Rich, Junco, and I climbed Mt. Fuji. Junco says they have a saying here that if you climb mt fuji twice, you are a fool. i think that i might agree, although it was definitely something im very glad i experienced. So, for anyone considering the climb to mt fuji, let me describe the process:
1) you will leave your place in tsukuba (ok, maybe not, but that is where rich and junco live so that is where we left from) at 600 AM on a saturday morning to "avoid the traffic" around tokyo. unfortunately, this is NOT EARLY ENOUGH and you will sit in stop and go traffic for about 2 hours trying to get through the city.
2) you will probably
drive up to "station five" to start your climb. The mountain is divided into 10 stations, with station 1 at the bottom and station 10 at the top. I was told that they are supposed to divide the mountain equally in ten, but the exact location of the stations seemed somewhat arbitrary to me. At station five you will see lots of tourists milling around. You will buy a walking stick for about $10 USD. Well, you probably won't buy one if you are going to continue to travel for 4 more months and dont want to lug around a walking stick, but it does make a cool souveneir. You may also buy chocolate.
2) You will begin your climb. if you are like most good japanese and want to summit the mountain at sunrise, you will start some time in the early afternoon. you will bring lots of warm clothes because its cold and wet at those high elevations and you will wear colorful rain gear and white cotton gloves. For the most part, you wll either hike on small rocks and gravel, walk up stair steps, or climb up some largish rocks (nothing you need climbing gear
for though). The japanese dont mess around with switch backs. when you do a climb, you more or less go straight up and straight back down. i have to give them credit, they do make a feeble attempt at the switch back, but the average length of one seems to be about 50-100 feet long, with what seems like about a 35% grade in some points.
3) As you ascend the mountain, you will pass several huts full of people selling chocolate, water, bananas, and oxygen tanks, the price of which may inrease the higher you get. The oxygen tanks arent scuba diving oxygen tanks, they are small little tanks that arent heavy and fit in your back pack. they come with a little plastic mask you can attach and breath into. did i mention mt fuji is like 12,388 ft? (but i am awesome, i didnt need any oxygen thanks to my amazing lungs. we did bring a tank though) anyway. as you pass through the huts, you will get each hut's unique "stamp" branded onto your walking stick with a hot poker thing for about $2 USD each. the huts have bathrooms, but if you have to
a typical view on the trail
I guess there are some who might like this view. pee, you have to pay about $1 USD every time because there is no water source on the mountain.
4) after about 5 or 6 hours of walking straight up hill, you will stop at the hut where you have reserved a, shall we say, "space" to sleep. This space will be about 1.5 feet wide by 5.25 feet long (max) squished into a little bed with a whole bunch of japanese people. After a low quality meal, you will attempt to go to sleep as early as possible (we went to bed at 5 PM), but it will be extremeley hot, cramped, and full of people snoring. so you may not get too much sleep.
5) You may awaken from your "sleep" in the middle of the night with altitude sickness, which includes nausea and headaches (no this actually did not happen to me, but it did happen to rich- sorry if i gave away your secret rich!). if you do have altitude sickness you will go into the main room of the hut and share your misery with all the other people with altitude sickness.
6) At 1:30 AM, you will awaken from your "sleep"
and get dressed in every shred of clothing you have carried with you because it will be very, very, cold. You will walk out of your hut and stare amazed at the disney-land like line of people attempting to summit the mountain at this ungodly hour (actually, 130 is not ungodly for me- to go to bed . . .) Although it technically should take about an hour of normal walking to reach the summit from your hut, you need to leave about 3 hours before sunrise because you have to wait in line to crawl up rocks in the dark.
7) As you wait your turn staring at the ass of the person in front of you, you will wonder if you are on a pilgrimage or a death march. you may lean toward the death march when you hear the sound of chains, i mean the ring of the bells attached to everyone's walking sticks. You will pear down below you and see the twinkle of everyone's head lamps spread out like so many stars below you. you may or may not get to see the actual stars because they might be obscured by clouds.
8)
You will reach the top, cold and wet, and seek shelter in the shrine at the top while you wait for the sunrise. They will give you a cool red stamp for your walking stick, which has now increased in value to about $30 USD with all the stamps . hopefully you still have some chocolate.
9) Finally, you remember why you wanted to do this death march, i mean, pilgrimage, as the sun starts to rise and, as a clearing in the mist rolls by (however briefly), you get to see amazing colors reflected on the cloud layer below you. you are so high up you feel like you are in an airplane, except you dont have that annoying canned air and all that plastic between you and the outside.
10) Now, you get to walk down the mountain. As you walk down, you will think to yourself how glad you are that you got up at 1:30 in the morning to do this climb because that insane line you stood in is getting worse. As you walk down, you will remember that yes, those japanese still dont mess around with switchbacks, and by the time you
reach the bottom of the mountain, you will (seriously) be longing for some kind of uphill ascent, anything to get the pressure off of your calves and knees.
11) By the time you reach the bottom at about 8:00 AM, you will have been awake for about 7 hours. (if what you did the night before could be called sleeping). Then you will have some ice cream back at station five and walk a mile out to where you parked your car because the lot was so packed, it was quicker to park a mile away and walk in than to wait in line to drive closer.
12) if you are lucky, the people who you climbed the mountain with will have onsen (japanese hotsprings bath house) detecting skills and you will stop at one on the drive home, where you can get cleaned off, warmed up, and relaxed.
13) in about a day and a half, your calves and thighs will start to ache, perfect timing for your hike on mt misen in miyajima (see the next entry). but not to worry, that one is only a mere 1700 feet. hooray!
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Tracy
non-member comment
hamstrings, baby
That photo of people "stretching" at station five is RAD. I laughed out loud.