Climbing Mt. Doom…I mean Mt. Fuji!

So this past weekend, I faced one of the toughest challenges yet in my short tenure of living in Japan: Mt. Fuji. 12,388 feet (or 3,776 m for you silly metric users out there) of rock and broken dreams. And I’m only slightly kidding about the broken dreams part.

Fuji-san is located on Japan’s main island of Honshu and is the highest mountain in the country. It is one of Japan’s “Three Holy Mountains;” I hope to climb the other two at some point as well but that adventure will definitely be saved for another day (I need to let my toes recover in the meantime).

Map of Japan. Mt. Fuji is the small yellow rectangle near the bottom right of the main island.

This bout of insanity all began early Saturday morning when I hopped the 6:30am train from Obama to Tsuruga to meet up with 3 other ALTs. A good hour and a half drive later we arrived in Fukui City to meet up with the rest of the group. 23 ALTs in total from all over Fukui prefecture; all of us filled with innocent joy and naïve excitement about the climb to come.

It was pouring down rain in Fukui City – fingers crossed that it’s not raining at Fuji!

Mimi, Amanda, Steph, and Joanna. Joanna was our ride up from southern Fukui both there and back.

Everyone gathered in Fukui City station waiting to get on the bus.

Will, Sharon, and I super excited for the climb!

We loaded up on the bus with our gear and hunkered down for the 9 hour ride ahead of us. Everyone was still feeling pretty chipper and the level of excitement reached new heights once Fuji-san was actually within sight.

One of our many rest stops en route.

Lunch on the way to Fuji! Really delicious but I’m quickly getting over all the fried foods here.

We were so excited when we could see it far off in the distance!

Getting closer!

Almost there!

Our bus driver took us to the Fuji Subaru 5^th Station which is the traditional beginning point for the majority of hikers. We arrived around 7pm and everyone took a few minutes to load up on last minute supplies. Personally, I bought a head lamp (probably THE BEST investment I made for this trip) as well as a can of oxygen (altitude sickness is a real concern for Fuji-san hikers and was my biggest anxiety point leading up to the ascent). Around 7:30pm everyone was finally ready to go, pictures were taken, and we began our climb up the Yoshida trail. 

It was already past sunset when we finally arrived.

So. ready.

Last chance to get your supplies.

Torii gates at the bottom – can’t wait to see the one at the top!

We all look like miners but those head lamps are the best thing when you need both hands to climb over rocks.

Everybody geared up and ready to go!

Now I’ve never done a night climb before this trip but, I must say, it has ruined me for hiking during the day. It’s actually very peaceful in many ways and it keeps you from constantly staring up the mountain since you must concentrate on the feet in front of you. In fact, if we had done this climb when the sun was out I probably would have been miserable knowing just how far we had to go. Ignorance really can be bliss.

All those little twinkling lights are fellow hikers coming up the mountain. Looks like a trail of stars.

We began in a big herd but eventually started breaking off into smaller groups as different paces were set. Hayley, Celeste, and I ended up together and hiked the majority of the climb with each other, occasionally rejoining, separating, and rejoining again with other groups. At the various stations (nine in total) we would check in with the other ALTs or chit chat with other hikers taking a moment to relax and adjust to the altitude change. The variety of people making the climb was pretty interesting. Ever since Fuji became a UNESCO site last year, more and more Japanese people have begun to climb the mountain but the majority of people I ran into were foreigners. Americans, Indonesians, Chinese, Europeans, South Americans, and even a dash of military trainees were all making the trek together. 

Celeste, Hayley, and I getting water and snacks.

People taking a break at one of the various stations along the mountain trail.

Hikers taking a break and adjusting to the altitude.

The altitude changes were not as bad as I predicted (I never ended up using my canned oxygen. Yay!) but the terrain was more difficult than expected. Since Fuji is still an active volcano, the ground consists of more loose dirt scattered with rocks (imagine walking on slightly stiffer sand dunes with occasional rocks sticking up here and there). It was a relief when we hit the pure rock sections; even though it was more bouldering than hiking, at least we had firm footholds and there wasn’t as much slipping.

As we ascended higher and higher, the temperature began to drop steadily. At one point I thought it was raining when, in actuality, we were just making our way through different cloud layers. All those cold weather clothes we had loaded in our backpacks began to come out and the layering process began. In reality, it wasn’t too bad until we arrived at the 9^th station. I had gotten separated from Hayley and Celeste and I took advantage of the station bathroom (I use that term lightly) to add on some thermal under linings and mentally prepare myself for the final haul up to the summit. 

A map of the Yoshida trail with the various stations marked up the mountain.

That last stretch between the 9^th station and the summit was when I hit my lowest point. The biggest advice I can give to people is to make sure that you climb with a buddy; they distract you from the elements and give you that much needed support when all you want to do is lie down in a rock crevice and fall asleep. It was approaching 2am at this point, it had reached freezing temperatures, and I had become separated from the rest of the group. This is the point when you begin to question your whole decision to attempt the climb at all.

Just when I felt like I would never reach the top, I finally, FINALLY saw the torii gate with the two shishi dogs guarding either side. I HAD MADE IT!

I officially arrived at the summit around 2am Sunday morning (so it took about 6.5 hours to complete the ascent) and it was bitterly cold. The temperature had dropped enormously but it was the wind gusts that made it almost miserable on top. There is a final station once you reach the summit but it wasn’t open which meant I was in need of some shelter. People were all lined up against the walls of the building in various states of frozen sleep, huddling together under coats or makeshift sleeping bags. I couldn’t find any of my fellow ALTs so I claimed the last tiny nook I could find to help buffer some of the wind that was howling through the area.

I’m pretty sure at this point I fell in and out of sleep/consciousness since my memory of this portion is very hazy. I’m not sure when everyone else started trickling in from the trail but the summit station was slowly starting to fill up and any possibility of sleep was lost. This is most likely a good thing since, unbeknownst to me earlier, my gloves had gotten wet and my hands were frozen into claws. I stumbled my way to the bathroom line where I’m pretty sure I fell asleep standing up (the winds were so strong that they would keep you erect) and I spent the next hour trying to bring back circulation to my extremities.

Once I wandered back from the bathroom, I realized that the station had finally opened and they were serving hot drinks and food items. One of my fellow ALTs/guardian angels let me hold her hot ramen bowl while they were bringing my tea just so I could start feeling my fingers again. It was at this point that I was questioning EVERYTHING. Why did I come on this trip? Why did I waste my weekend being miserable? Why, Why, WHY?

And then the sun started to rise.

People beginning to stir on the mountain top.

People lining up to see the sun rise.

And everything was forgotten. The freezing winds, the bloodless fingers, the cramps in my legs, the pain in my feet, everything.

It was glorious. I honestly have never seen something as naturally beautiful as this sunrise was. You could see the faint change in colors on the horizon and you knew it was coming. The clouds underneath you look like a rolling ocean that continues forever. You hold your breath as the first rays start to peek over. And then you exhale.

So close.

 

Here it comes!

Everybody staring off the mountain.

It was like an ocean of clouds beneath us.

Admiring the view.

It was all worth it. Every stumble, every pain, every shiver, all of it. Just for that sunrise. 

Panoramic view of the sunrise.

Selfie!

I’m on top of the world!

You never want it to end, as all good things must do. It was reaching 5:30am at this time and we knew we needed to start making the descent or we’d never reach our bus in time. We began to head down and, while considerably warmer, the descent was worse than the ascent. This was due to the extremely steep nature of the trail and that the loose dirt and rocks that we stumbled over the night before are much harder to negotiate when going with gravity. It took us around 5 hours to make it all the way down and that bus never looked so good!

Sun is up. Time to climb down.

Slowly getting closer to the clouds.

Almost to the cloud layer.

View of the trail to the summit during the day. I’m very glad we did it at night.

We loaded back up and made the 9 hour return trek back to Fukui, everyone sporadically passing out along the way. Once back to Fukui City, us Reinan gals needed to head back down South which was at least another two hours given that we all needed to stop at the grocery store before heading home.

I finally made it back to my house closing in on 11pm and I was so happy to see my futon I could have cried. A quick shower and a hot cup of green tea later, I was slipping into my sheets without a dream in sight.

All in all, Mt. Fuji was truly an once-in-a-lifetime experience. Despite the trials and tribulations that you must go through to get to the summit, nothing compares to that view from the top of the world.

Before Fuji…

…after Fuji.