How Not to Climb Mt. Fuji

After returning from the Tokyo trip my sleep schedule was rather messed up; especially from the Roppongi all night dance session. The next several days were spent without too much activity but within a week of returning I was invited to climb Mt. Fuji with the Australian international students and a few others. I was a little indecisive cause I didn’t feel like it at the time and a had something I was supposed to do on that day; but in the end I decided to come along and cancel my other plan. Their Fuji climbing idea fit my model pretty well anyway: Climbing in the middle of the week, at night. With this setup it would be the least crowded. I’d heard from people who’d climbed before me on (stupidly) a Saturday or Sunday that they spent about 4 hours inching up the mountain sardine style like a giant human snake because of how crowded it gets as you near the top.

The night climb is also a nice idea because you start climbing around 9pm and climb through the night to reach the summit just before sunrise and view the sunrise and then the beautiful view from the tallest point in the country. On a perfectly clear day it’s probably possible to see out to the sea in some directions. It’s definitely possible to see Shizuoka and Yamanashi prefectures in their entirety’s. [sp?] (Fuji sits right on the border of the two prefectures, so that you can climb it from either side)

We got everything packed up and made it to the bus station in time, then hopped on the bus for a boring 2 hour or so ride. After that, another 50 minute ride to station 5. Not much to tell here so I’ll explain the basics of Mt. Fuji climbing to you all. First of all, the sacred mountain is divided into 10 different altitudes in a sense; or rather, there are 10 divisions based upon altitude in which a key building, known as a station, is built. Put simply station 1 is the very base, station 5 is about halfway up, and station 10 is at the summit. These stations are not simply a sign in the side o the volcano, but they’re actually quite the franchise. At each station you can buy food, drinks, use restroom facilities, and step inside of a semi-heated (or just not as cold) shelter to warm up and rest; for a fee of course. There are also smaller buildings in which you can buy a limited selection of snacks and drinks; sometimes you can also warm up and/or find a toilet. They work it to where if you’re really not up for the climb at some point, you can see a little light at the end of the tunnel to motivate you so that you can rest at each semi-station.

It is important to note that most people take a bus to station 5 and begin their climb from there. Yes, halfway up the mountain. Now I don’t want to hear anyone complain about these people not “truly” climbing Fuji or any of that BS until you go and climb from station 5 up. Station 1-5 would be walking up a road getting passed by buses full of more intelligent individuals, “true” climbers or not. Not to mention that this would lengthen the total climb time to oh I don’t know….10-12 hours I’d guess. By the time you get to the hard parts you’d be so worn out chances of failure (and injury) would be high.

So like everyone else, we started from station 5. Well, rather we waited around for the other Aussies to arrive and had some food. We also bought the obligatory souvenir Mt. Fuji walking stick. There are times when I wish it could have transformed into a Mt. Fuji sacred icepick or something more useful for rock climbing, but they have a nifty stamp system where at every station you can pay a couple bucks and get it branded with various stamps showing which stations you stopped at, the altitude, etc. If you had it all stamped and climbed from Station 5 you’d probably spend $30 or so in total. Not a bad little gig. These Fuji people have quite the goldmine for 2 months out of the year. I hope that money goes toward some kind of Mt. Fuji preservation society or something.

The other Aussies (Kofu’s crew and several of Tokyo’s crew) arrived and we got started. Putting on our ponchos. Because it was raining. Dammit. Our crew consisted of about 8 or 9 Aussies, a Japanese, and a…Ukrainian/Russian (guess). It was sprinkling rain and night time. We set out quite by ourselves as the trail was completely not crowded. Unfortunately I must have missed the kanji for “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”.

Taking a bus to station 5 will surprise you when you try to make physical effort; within a few minutes I was breathing hard and my heart was beating at workout speeds even though all I was doing was walking comfortably up a slight incline. I didn’t feel at all stressed in my muscles; the air was just that thin. This mountain trail is wide enough at almost all points for at least two climbers to move side by side. At the beginning of station 5 it’s wide enough to go 5 or 6 in a line. Let me point out that it is the middle of the night. On a mountain. No, of course it’s not lighted. It was pitch black on a night just cloudy enough to obscure what moonlight we would have had. And raining just a bit. Of course we all brought flashlights, but still it was hard to see at times. I waited on using my light; relying on the light from the others and the easy terrain.

Now there isn’t a lot I can say about the actual climbing process so I’ll give you a general description and hit some of the highlights. After maybe 30 minutes of climbing it stopped raining and we went back to regular clothes. It was cool enough to want my jacket (about 40-45 degrees) so I was layered up all the way from then on. I packed semi-light. We’d climb at our own paces for about 30 minutes at a time and then stop at the small rest areas and wait for everyone to catch up. We had a decent sized group which meant people in various levels of cardio fitness (though everyone was pretty trim visually). It got windy which made it colder. I was glad I had a backpack to help keep me warm. The terrain ranged in difficulty from a simple inclined slope with tricky shifty dirt and gravel to full on rock climbing. Sometimes there were steps cut out of the rock so it was mostly climbing stairs but even then the stairs were a little below knee high so it was quite the workout.

As for the highlights, predictably, the more difficult parts of the terrain rendered the walking stick near useless. More problematic is that is rendered the hand holding it equally useless. If, by chance, the other light held a flashlight one encounter a difficult time getting over the harder terrain. I was smart and bought a lamp that you could wear on your head leaving me a free hand. It was definitely the VIP in terms of equipment. Also it was a led so it provided at least twice the radius of illumination over the standard bulb flashlight. All of the terrain had a trick to it. The easiest incline flat path had many small gravels which would make you slide just a bit when taking a step. The steps were twice as high as normal steps and got to your thighs after everything else you’d already climbed, the steeper incline nearer to the top had the small gravel but on top was bigger chunky gravel, so if you took a bad step you could twist an ankle fairly easily.

Last but not least is the rock climbing section! At which point you find yourself looking up at a 45 or 50 degree angle I guess. In any case, looking up at jutting rocks. There’s not really a path at this point in fact the people following me all took a wrong turn when I assumed the path was somewhere it wasn’t. We only found out when we came upon some other climbers coming in from a slightly different angle and that we were on the wrong side of the chain link rope intermittently marking one edge of the trail. I looked back on their trail and it seemed following the path in that instance offered no distinct advantage over the “trail” I took. The rocks would come up to the knee level at the lowest, and about the upper abdomen at the highest. Yes, higher than the waist by a good bit. That made climbing pretty difficult for some members of our group. My approach was to find one or two handholds, maybe one foothold, and then jump up and sort of wall-run the rest of the way hoping the momentum would carry me the rest of the way up to a predetermined handhold. The older gentleman’s way would be to use handhold more liberally and carefully select good footholds moving a bit more slowly. The jumping idea was just something I was trying because I had extra energy from waiting for some or all of the group during the hardest parts, but it proved a bit dangerous as sometimes I’d land without and good footing or handhold and backpedal down partway or all the way back to where I started. At those times it was hard to avoid falling. Speaking of falling, the wind go so strong and so random in it’s outbursts that I and several others were literally blown over out of the blue while climbing. If I were standing normally I would have been fine but while leaning so much to climb anyway it didn’t take a whole lot. Still it was very powerful.

At one point my hands got too cold (I got to a station way faster than the rest for some reason and got cold while waiting on them) so I had to spend 15 or 10 minutes in the hut warming them up. I didn’t pay any money though; I think the tenant didn’t see me walk in and didn’t want to try to ask me about it after the fact. Or maybe he saw my hands and decided not to toil with the fee in my case. As soon as my fingers were good to go again we headed out.

Also at one point near the top it got so very misty and foggy that even with the light I couldn’t see more than 2 steps ahead of where my feet currently were. People were slipping and sliding all over the place.

Near the top it became crowded and for the last 90 minutes or so I had to wait on the people in front of me to move before I could advance as well. Luckily my hands didn’t give me trouble at that point. The last leg of the race was such an annoyance: it was crowded enough that I could see where the torches stopped ahead of me. I could more or less gauge where the top was and how far I had to go, yet I couldn’t get there because it was so packed. That 90 minutes I could have covered alone in 30 minutes or less. I think most people could have, I’m not bragging about my speed….it was just too crowded. I’m glad I didn’t spend 4 or so hours like that like my counterparts who’d climbed on a weekend earlier.

The mist from before lightened up slightly but never went away. I didn’t make it to the top by sunrise but I’m sure I didn’t miss out on anything. :( sadly it went from being dark and so foggy I couldn’t see more than 100 feet to light and so foggy I couldn’t see more than 100 feet. I got my summit stamp marked into my walking stick and made sure to find everyone else. I walked around at the top for a little bit and then we all headed into a giant hut. It was free and we could stay for a while as long as we didn’t sleep. A few people had ramen or soup. Hot foods. I had eaten some cup ramen at station 8 or so.

So basically, we were at the top, and it sucked. It was too misty to see sunrise, or to look down at anything below, or to look down into the crater I the middle of the summit from the last eruption. On a non-foggy but cloudy day it’d be at least like being in an airplane: you could look down on the clouds stretching out for miles. We couldn’t even do that! We wasted time and screwed around for awhile. Mostly resting. It was about 33 degrees; just warm enough that there was no ice. It started raining again. We were all glad to have accomplished the climb with success and no injuries, but were so miffed by the weather (reports they told us at the top said it was actually going to get colder, foggier, and rain more) that we decided to head down and go to sleep asap. Heading down was not fun.

It was steep going downhill, probably a 20% grade I dunno, and the terrain was like sand. It was seriously like walking down a sand dune for 3 hours. When placing a foot it would sink about 2 inches down and slide about 4 inches forward. To complicate this there were tennis ball to shoe sized rocks covering enough of the trail that again twisting an ankle was a very real possibility. It was like this with no change for about 3 hours straight. Even for me in pretty good shape my knees and the muscles and ligaments around them were taking quite a bit of wear. Climbing up is alot easier than sliding down in my opinion.

Also there was the rain. It started raining hard. Within minutes everyone was soaked anywhere that wasn’t covered by a poncho. After 15 minutes every was soaked pretty much everywhere, except for me. I bought a better quality poncho back in the states whereas they mostly bought the cheap one sold at the mountain. It looked good but had nothing when it came to the heavy rain we were hit with. I managed to stay dry from my mid thigh up, but the arms, legs, and head were a write off in the dry department. Worse was that I didn’t think to put my bag under my poncho within the first few minutes so it quickly became completely soaked along with everything inside of it. Luckily my camera survived, but I wasn’t able to take many pictures of my climb for you guys as it had to dry for a few days. Several people’s cellphones were ruined.

The bad part for me was that I had been advised to bring some extra clothes and when all of this became wet my pack gained 5 or 6 pounds of water. Luckily I tend to pack too much and carry that pack around often so my shoulders didn’t rip off then and there, but I was feeling the burn. It was as if Mt. Fuji decided to flush off any climbers who dared to hike on that day as the sand dune became a mudslide and while the same symptoms persisted it was much funnier when someone besides yourself fell.

Now up until this point I’ve portrayed the trip as somewhat uncomfortable or downright miserable at times. And it was. But for me it was actually a pretty good time and I wasn’t bothered by it much at all. I just had one of those attitudes that lets you take anything in stride and not be put off by setbacks or bad weather. (We checked the weather report but the reports aren’t made for those altitudes….or our group’s weather checkers didn’t think of that and screwed up) So honestly I having a good time of it. You guys just wouldn’t read the situation as it was if I wrote it up that way.

Eventually my good mood was put off though, by the ramen I’d bought at the 8th station. It unexpectedly left me with an upset stomach for the rest of the day, which made physical exertion such as climbing very not fun. On top of that the trip down has 1 restroom about halfway and nothing else. So apparently the bright minds that came up with the 10 stations of Fuji somehow thought that after climbing that much everyone would easily be able to descend another 2-4 hours without needing any rest, restrooms, or food. That’s just bad design. I took some tums and continued to trudge down with my upset stomach. That and the weather at the top officially sucked.

On the bright side, due to the rain eventually the mist parted and while there were some clouds we could see quite a lot of Yamanashi from the height of station 7 or so. My camera was still soaked so I couldn’t take any photos. It was beautiful though.

We met up with everyone back at station 5, which looked completely different and much more lively in daylight with all the tourist stores open. I bought a pack of Mt. Fuji postcards, so if you email me (be smart, don’t post it in the comments section) your address I’ll write you a little note and send you a Fuji postcard. There’s 12 in the set. First 10 or so will get a postcard eventually. (2 weeks or so shipping + my procrastination time + gf visiting for a week = be patient!) Send those emails, you cool cats! You can find it under the contact section. Send to my aim name at gmail.com. If anyone doesn’t know it post up and I’ll put you in the queue for a postcard at the time you comment and get your address later.

We finally made the bus trip home. I had standing water in my hiking boots (thanks dad, the boots were perfect for the climb!) so I bought a pair of socks and switched into them and no shoes for the bus ride home. Sadly after all that I still had the mile or so bike ride uphill back to the dorm before I could shower and sleep. The ones who walked it took a cab. We were tired. I didn’t feel sore until the middle of the next day but eventually my legs got to where I didn’t want to go outside cause there were stairs. Going up them was about like normal…but I felt about like a tin man trying to go down them. I don’t work the muscles you use on the downhill portion very much so didn’t heal as quickly. It took about 4 or 5 days before I was completely back to normal. Within 2 or 3 I was getting around like I used to.

All in all it was a cool experience, a good climb, and it taught me how you do the impossible or reach goals that simply don’t seem doable. When climbing Fuji I would look up ant various times and see a road ahead of me so long that I couldn’t even see anything resembling the end at the limits of my vision. Trying to reach that point with your eyes on the summit made it seem really impossible. It was just so far away. So I decided if I had nothing else to occupy my mind as I made my journey, to concentrate on the simple act of placing one foot before the other and moving one carefully chosen step at a time. Walking normally would surely result in a fall within minutes as many people demonstrated as I plod along. So yeah…when dealing with a goal that just seems unreachable the only practical way to get there is to take the small steps that are very possible and keep at it until they add up to the distance you are trying to reach. It took a long time and at most points when I’d look up I had no idea how much longer it would take, but eventually through persistently stepping and not thinking about how much longer it would take I finally was in sight of the top and made my final sprint….or rather…..was caught up in a traffic jam of like-minded climbers, as we stormed the summit one step at a time. (There’s plenty of room at the top but the road to it is 2 people wide haha)

So I learned and practiced something cool from Fuji and made a memorable experience. Maybe one of those memories that you tell around the bar with old friends and talk about how bad the conditions were, but I’m glad I did it. It was challenging mentally and physically, but never very hard at any one moment. And I have it to add to my list of “I’ve managed to do ‘_____’, so why not ‘_____’?” Which is a very handy list to have to look back on. It makes every future obstacle or worry seem a little more manageable.