Day 14-15: Mt Fuji

I was apprehensive about climbing Fuji. The last hike I did was Tiger Leaping Gorge in China almost 2 years ago when I thought I was about 6 kgs lighter and actually fitter, and i felt it was tough. I never actually worked out what the vertical climb on that hike was, but after a 6 hr climb I was absolutely wrecked. The descent to the gorge the next day was painful too and I arrived about 2-3 hrs after Paul, and he only hiked about 3 hours that day...

Fuji is a much more well known hike so I know for a fact that it is close enough to a 1400m vertical ascent, which to me sounded like a lot. The trip up was supposed to take 4-6 hours and the descent anywhere from 2-4 hours. I wanted to climb in time to summit for sunrise (my guess was about 4:30am) so I knew I had to start before 10 at the latest.

Due to the way things were scheduled on Wednesday I ended up at the bus station at 4:30, and the next bus to Mt Fuji was at 4:50pm so I decided to just hop onto that. Its a 2 hr bus ride to the 5th station, which is already 2.4km above sea level. I had checked the weather report which stated a chance of rain - I was not looking forward to hiking in the rain, and sure enough on the way to the 5th station, we drove through TORRENTIAL rain, with a lightning strike right next to the bus leaving the awake passengers gasping.

Fortunately when we got to the 5th station it was only very lightly raining, still not ideal but a much improved situation than I feared. I dawdled at the 5th station stop till about 7:45, not wanting to set off too early in fears of arriving at the summit at like 1am to wait in the cold (4C) for 4 hours waiting for the sunrise. But me being me, I got impatient and had to set off, i just couldn't stand sitting around any longer, I was bored.


This was the map at the start of the trail - I think my headlamp hides it a bit, but you get the idea. There were quite a large variety of people on the hike, which I got to observe at the 5th station. There are couple of German guys, a northern European looking couple, some Americans, some honkies, and quite a few Japanese with my bus having about 1/3 foreigners.

About 30 mins into the hike I came across the Americans, J and D who turn out to the siblings and not a "honeymooning couple" which most people assume they are (which disgusts the both of them immensely). They graciously allow me to tag along with them, which means I don't spend the next 12 hours with my own thoughts for company.

They are really nice, interesting people, evidence of this being how fast time passed as we chatted all the way up the summit. The other advantage for me of tagging along with these guys was that they allowed me to pace myself. In almost every hike I've ever done, I've always gone too hard too early and tired myself out. By going at their pace, I was able to conserve energy at the start so that I would make it to the top.

Knowing that we had a lot of time up our sleeves, we stopped for 30mins or so at each station, to rest and kill time at warmer temperatures, aware that it would get colder as we got to the top.

Aside: There were theses walking sticks sold at the 5th station, which I briefly flirted with the tea of getting but decided not to, but it turns out that at each station, you can get your stick branded, making it a pretty damn cool souvenir! Dennis had one - I was jealous!

As we slowly made our way to the top, I noticed that at each station, the Japanese hikers would all be taking naps, even if it they were only stopping for 15 minutes. (At this point, I would like to also note that some of these guys looked ultra prepared - hiking boots, really professional looking pants and jacket, gators, walking poles, those silver reflective blankets you see on TV when they rescue people lost in the mountains. ) I can sleep on trains with the best of them, but sweaty and slightly cold on a mountain? Respect.

We actually made great time between stations, easily beating the recommended times, but because we took our time at each station, we noticed the trail getting more and more crowded and looking back down the mountain we could see a trail of headlamps, like an army of glowing ants, snaking towards their nest... We decided to keep ahead of these main groups and by the time we reached the top at about 3am where once again, the people who got their before us were sleeping..

It was supposedly on 4C up at the top but it felt cold. I wore every piece of clothing I brought with me and I was barely enough, I think Jand D had less but I guess im just weak...

We had prime positions in the 2nd row for the sunrise and at this point words would not be able to do what we saw justice. All I will say is that we were extremely fortunate to get perfect conditions for the sunrise.

Pre-Dawn
Getting Lighter:
Sea of Clouds


The Sun Appears!






Simply Stunning.

The descent was tricky - it was very steep and ranged from dirt to medium sized gravel. There were dozens of times when I almost fell and I witnessed many people fall down, however we made good time, getting back to 5th station at 8am - where my legs were shaking even when I was just standing up. I had been warned about the damage to my knees, but even my dodgy broken knee seemed to hold up OK.

The attempt to get a bus ticket back to Tokyo was by far the biggest debacle of the very efficient and organised Japanese transport system I have seen. For some obscure reason, you are unable to buy a return ticket at Shinjuku, which means we had to get a ticket at the 5th station in the morning to return. Not surprisingly, quite a few people were in the same boat, and with the first bus arriving at 10am, and the ticket office only opening at 9:45am, there were people lining up outside the office by 9am. When the office did open, the lady seemed confused, which confused me, because all she did was sell tickets to either kawaguchi station or Shinjuku, and when someone says Shinjuku, 3 people - it should not be something that she hasn't heard before considering the number of people (every day in July and August) that would be trying to get back to Tokyo after watching the sunrise.

The 'line' to the ticket office soon degenerated into a Chinese style line (i.e a crowd trying to shove money under the window shouting numbers of people and destinations). There was a lot of confusion about the availability of seats for the 10am bus, I was told by the lady that there was only 1 seat on the 10am bus, so I asked for the 11am, but when she finally got me the tickets (after much faffing around) it was for 10am... I'm not complaining, I was just confused. One poor guy in front of me was trying to get 7 tickets, which he was told several times was not possible and then ignored. The thing is this - I bought 3, there were people behind me that bought another 3, and there were 4 empty seats on the bus. Those poor guys I think ended up on the 11am, but I am sure that there were 7 seats for them on our bus at the time that they asked...

Anyway we hop on the bus and I promptly fall into a much needed sleep. I met up with PF for Lunch where he took me to a tonkotsu restaurants - perfect after not eating for the past 18 hours. No blog entry of mine would be complete with a food picture right?