Mt. Fuji

Here I am at 6 pm ready to go to Shinjuku to get the 2 hr bus to Mt. Fuji. At this point I am thinking that its gonna be easy because people always exaggerate and are cry babies, and I am in pretty decent shape because I run 10 km a couple times a week. at about 2 am in the morning I would realize how bad it sucks. Looking back at this post i see there isn't any humor laced in here, that's because there was no humor to be found on this mountain.

as most people do we took the bus to the 5th station which is about halfway up the mountain. We took the most popular trail up because that's where the bus drops you. We went on a wednesday night so it wasn't horribly crowded but there were still a lot of people doing this thing. we did the option where you start climbing at 10 pm and make it to the top by 4:30 am for the sun rise, climbing straight through the night. the other option is start climbing in the daytime, then stop and sleep in a mountain hut that costs $70. You can't even sleep though because there are just people like us passing through or resting making tons of noise outside the huts.

When we first started out me and marco were in high spritits. we were engergized, and ready for adventure. it was like being 12 yrs old again with our flash lights in the dark. as we went up the clouds rolled in over the huge megaopolis that is yokohama/tokyo and whatever else melds into it all. it looked pretty surreal.

you def need a flashlight, and even better one of those LED headlamps so your hands can be free. it doesn't get that cold unless you stop moving. i was def glad i brought all the clothes i did because it really does get pretty cold at the top even in the summer. its basically winter up there. I thought i had over packed too. I read online about the lines to wait and climb and mountain. these lines are not so bad because it give you time to take a rest.

There we are at the torii gate at the top. we made it! It was just me and marco, which made it easier to plan the trip and climb. i can imagine what it would be like to climb with a group of people, probably annoying. Mt. fuji is the tallest mountain in Japan at 3,777 meters. Me and Marco didn't feel any altitude sickness or extreme shortness of breath which i was afraid of. Didn't look like anyone else was having a problem either. When i went to Yulong Xueshan (Jade Dragon Snow Mountain) in China is was 5,596 meters and everyone definitely had altitude headaches, and could only take like 10 steps and had to rest. it didn't help that you ascend by cable car in about 20 mintues

Japanese people buy premium hiking gear, so it looks like a rainbow of people waiting for the sun to rise.

coins stuck in the back

bells on the tori gate.

offerings? someone left 3 cucumbers. wat the heck.

Mt. Fuji is an active volcano. this is the crater. it takes an hour to walk around the crater. the other side has the highest part of the mountain which would be the highest point in all of Japan. At this point lots of people are at their end, super tired and just want to go down. but how can you come here and not go to the highest point in japan?

random tori gates. it is super beautiful being above the clouds and seeing the lush green lands of japan below. we were lucky and the weather was perfectly clear all night and day. I saw 5 or 6 shooting stars.

that's the ocean on the upper left.

highest post office in japan, it doesn't open until 6am, at this point it was 5am and we had been climbing for 7 hrs straight with no sleep so F U guys no way am i waiting around for an hr to send you a post card. all websites are careful to say highest post office in japan so looks like there are higher post offices in the world somewhere.

a grandma. there were tons of old people, at least 50% of the people. they climbed up and down this mountain. how? me and marco were dead at the end of the day

highest point in japan.

Mt. Fuji's shadow. pretty cool and unreal.

my knees were destroyed and on fire after decending the mountain for 4 hrs. 4hrs of knees getting pounded. going down is way worse than going up. also its summer and its super hot. I don't know how these old people all did it. I would never climb Mt. Fuji again. sure its super beautiful at the top after the sun rises but 12 straight hrs of up and down on a pile of sand gets pretty grating.

3x price gouging.

these poor kids. thats what we felt like but we can't do that cuz we're adults.

the upper 2 hours or so of the mountain is all black sand, which im guessing is volcanic rock and ash and stuff. climbing a pile of sand for hours is pretty strenuous and descending a pile of sand is even worse.

glacier

doesn't this look pretty fun?

we read on some guys blog how easy it is to just go bounding down the mountain and take the wrong trail and end up hours and hours away from the bus station where you're supposed to end up. that almost happened to us

going down into the clouds.

you can't see very well but this is a 4 hour zig zag switch back trail down the mountain. it seemed like it would never end and it kept getting hotter. I can't even imagine doing this with most of my girl friends. they would die.

example of Japanese people with their premium climbing gear. the trend seems to be neon colors these days. I wore my jogging clothes and jogging shoes and brought some extra sweat shirts.

maybe i have a cloud fetish. anyway it was crazy to look out on the clouds at your own level. its as if they accepted me as one of their own. and then you go back to remembering how bad it sucks to be going down this mountain.

almost to the bus stop they had these people with bottled water that could be yours if you only fill out a survey.

this poor kid was carrying a ton of stuff.

since i didnt have proper hiking boots my jogging shoes got filled with volcanic sand. So the final thoughts are that I will never climb mt. fuji again. its beautiful but.... and it was as hard as people say it is on the internet. I mean i thought it was even harder than what they say on the internet. the whole time i was thinking, why didn't anyone say how bad this actually sucks? Anyway i can check this one off my list now. Info for would be climbers: I brought 2 liters of water, 2 bento box things from the convenience store, LED headlamp, the clothes i would basically wear in the winter time, jogging shoes, and 2 chocolate bars. all of this the right amount of what i needed.