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Published: September 22nd 2010
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I'm a broken man. Fuji literally pile-drived me so hard that, not only am I still amazingly sore a few days later, NEW problems are popping up (like awful stomach aches and immense back pain) that I can only attribute to Fuji's masterful art of kicking my ass.
But I have the last laugh, Fuji! I have pictures and videos of the sunrise that I took while standing atop your lifeless (but still active) volcano crater, you bastard. And I get to show them around to all of my friends that don't have the wonderful opportunity to hike up you for 8 hours in the dark, or to almost be blown away by your shotgun-like wind gusts, or to almost freeze to death waiting for the sun to rise on your summit. Your secret's out, and I'm gonna show everyone what it's like to conquer you, fool!
I woke up around 4:30am, and I was nervous. I had been intensely planning this trip for the better part of 2 weeks, researching, telling everyone what they needed for a hike of this magnitude, and reserving a tour in Japanese (I had some major Japanese help on this one from Mizuho
Fuji from afar
Who knew those Hokusai clouds actually existed?!and Marina, two TIU students), and now the day had arrived when I would be attempting to fulfill my dream of being the tallest thing in Japan (I know, I'm a bastard :P).
Honestly, I'm not even sure when this dream came about, but I think it wasn't until relatively recently: James, a co-worker at Insomniac this summer, was telling me about his time in Japan, and how one he hiked up Fuji in the dark and seen the sunrise the next day. 'Wow!' I remember thinking. 'I'll be getting warmed up in Yosemite, and then I'll be prepared for Fuji!' Wrong. Also, long before my conversation with James, many years ago, I had discovered Hokusai, a 17th century Japanese woodblock artist, and his various paintings of Fuji-san: I wouldn't put it past me to have sub-consciously started mulling over the thought of climbing Fuji way back then, just so I was psyched up enough to do it when I actually went to Japan. Either way, I was crazy enough to say "I'm GOING to the top of that mountain", and that's exactly what I did. I'm just glad I overpacked.
I showed up at the Kasumigaseki train
station at 5:30am carrying my legit (and huge) backpacker's backpack, borrowed from a friend/customer of my host dad, nicknamed Kevin. It was full of leggings, shirts, windbreakers, coats, socks, beef jerky, a headlamp, hats and gloves, two hiking poles, and rain gear to go over all of me, even the backpack. Combined with the 2 liters of water I was carrying, it was heavy.
My friends waited on the platform for me, all too nervous and excited to look tired. One of our friends was missing, but we had a bus in Tokyo to catch, and a long train ride beforehand, so we peaced. After two trains and walk through a downtown area of Tokyo called Shinjuku, we found a few hundred people chilling out on a street corner, all wearing backpacks and shorts, some carrying hiking poles. Using our power of 7 Japanese language students combined, we somehow found our bus and got in the right seats, and then waited for Emily, our late compadre, to show up. I had this great moment of guiding her from the train station to the buses by cell phone as the ran full out through Shinjuku: it had a very Morpheus-Neo
vibe to it, as if I could see her every move through The Matrix!
3 hours and change later, we were approaching Fuji-san, the tallest mountain in Japan,
Active Stratovolcano, and one of the most recognizable sights in the world. We rounded a bend, and there it was. Good God, it is massive. That feeling of slight hilarity that you get when you realize that you can't quite comprehend what you've gotten yourself into hit everyone in our group, and giggles followed by "Oh shits" sprung up in harmony.
For the rest of this, I'm going to let the pictures do most of the talking, because chronicaling (not a word) everything that happened in the next 18-19 hours doesn't sound like fun to me. Instead, I'll pick out small moments that were ball-bustlingly noteworthy of some sort and harp on those. So don't be weirded out if this doesn't flow as well as the rest of the blog.
On our way up, George took the camera, so I actually have pictures of me! Around 2 hours long, the first leg of our climb up to where we stayed at the 7th station was relatively easy, and fun. This
actually ended up being a bad thing, as we then had to climb the majority of the mountain in the cold and dark, another 6 hours. We also didn't know how hard it would be to fall sleep at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, sleeping with 9 other people on the same futon with the same blankets, even after waking up at dawn and ascending a good chunk of a mountain. In case you also don't know, I will tell you: it's ridiculously hard. It was probably harder than climbing Mt Fuji itself, because at least we all completed THAT task. I think the one of us who slept the most was Thomas, and he only slept for an hour and a half. At around 7pm, I threw in the towel and headed outside to join everyone else who couldn't sleep. For the next 2 hours or so, myself, Matt and George stood out as the last of night fell and surveyed the good slice of Japan that we could see from about 9,000ft altitude. It was one of those great, ultimately relaxing moments for me, where, if I hadn't been possessed by this insane dream to continue hiking up
for another 2700 feet to see the sunrise for a few minutes, I would've been quite content to just stay there for the night, tell ghost stories by the campfire, and chill with the Japanese attendants in the hut. I managed to get probably 15 mins of sleep in the end, but I wasn't even tired until much, much later.
At 10pm, when we were all officially sleepy, we resumed our ascent. It was an epic struggle for the next 6 hours. I busted out my borrowed hiking poles again, and just trudged. I guess the nice thing about hiking at night was that there were no views for us to waste time or energy on looking at, and because it was nighttime I was able to almost zen out and get into the rhythm of just putting one foot in front of the the other, over and over and over again. We hiked past many stopped groups or individual climbers busting out their little spray-paint bottles filled with pure oxygen to have a good breath of fresh air. None of us had bought one, and we ended up not needing them, but there were a few times that
Headlamps Down Below
As seen from the summit. All those lights are climbers... I got out of breath when I could've used one to see if it helped.
By the time we got up to the 8th station, the wind had really picked up and cooled down, so we all tried to huddle for warmth when we stopped. It was hard to manage all the clothing, because I'd bee really hot while we were moving, but as soon as we'd stop, the wind would just cut right through me and freeze all the sweat on me. This meant that almost every time we stopped, I had to add two layers to what I had been wearing. Again, thank god I over-packed.
We got to the 9th station around 2:30am, and we were beaten. Emily had been struggling with a urinary tract infection since we left our wonderful little house on the 7th station, and everyone was cold, and working on less than an hour of sleep. We plopped ourselves down in front of the last open lodge on the mountain, and looked in eagerly at all the warm people eating food inside. It was pathetic. I felt like an orphan on the street looking in at a happy family: all I
Having a beer
That's right, Fuji was a BYOB event. So, yeah, we brought our own beers. The beer's name is Asahi, which means "morning sun" in Japanese. wanted to do was to go in and join them, eat some food, take my boots off, and get warm again. We even tried at one point, but they informed us that they were actually, despite all the people inside, closed.
We got up eventually, around 3:00am, and rounded the corner to look upon what I think was the most staggeringly depressing and simultaneously epic sight I've seen recently. We looked up, and for about 600 feet, steeper uphill than we'd been going this whole time, thousands of little lights bobbed up and down, slowly moving upwards to the summit.
I just couldn't do it. I needed to have a sit down first. Emily went to the bathroom, and I sat down with Matt and David, and we just took it in. Even the 9th station was packed with more people than we'd ever seen. I guess this was the real choke point: it asked ' Have you got what it takes???' and we answered yes. I decided that if there was any moment that I'd brought my iPod for, this was it and I was gonna listen to the most epic and invigorating music I had in
my possession: Nightwish's
Dark Passion Play . For the next hour and 15 minutes exactly, gunned it upwards on the last stretch of what had been, for everyone (except George, maybe) the hardest hike of our lives. As the end of the album came to a close, I walked through the shrine gate on the top of Mt. Fuji, turned around, and saw the very beginnings of the sunrise. It was very faint, but even that sight gave me enough strength to sit in one place for the next hour.
Finally, the sunrise. The most rewarding and epic thing I've ever had the pleasure of seeing. Obviously not even the pictures do it justice, but the video might, and I certainly won't in my writing. All I'll say was that it was completely worth all the pain that we went though to see that sight.
Afterwards, we were so tired that we stopped at the 9th station on the way down, plopped ourselves on some free dirt, and took a half an hour nap. This was great because it gave me, David, and Matt strength enough to run down the entire rest of Fuji! The way we
had come up was for ascenders only, and the other path down was this wide, loosely graveled trail. We found it was actually easier to run down, and when you ran you had a less likely chance of falling. Coming down the mountain that we had taken 8 hours+ to ascend took us an hour and 10mins! We booked it, but it was really fun. It was also day out now, so as we descended we could see the surrounding area of Fuji get bigger and bigger as we came out of the clouds and back onto the Earth. We stripped off layers and layers until we were just in our T-shirts again.
So that's it. That was the Fuji experience, and it was worth every ache and pain I got during and after, and I recommend it to anyone and everyone who goes to Japan. Turns out that my dream to climb Fuji was doable after all, and it was the best hiking experience of my life.
I'm still getting the videos posted on Youtube because Travelblog was being an asshole. Check back later to find the videos of the way up and the sunrise!!
Rowan
P.S. By the way, Fuji, I'm still laughing!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA.....
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Beverly & Cliff
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Congratulatons
Your report is so descriptive we could feel the cold and your sore muscles. What a great experience. Are you planning to do it again soon? Love your blogs. Thanks, Cliff and Beverly