Mt. Fuji

The big adventure last week was our climb of Mt. Fuji-san. Only Shari and I went on this one and it was good we did! Katie and Alex would not have been able to do it. Devon may get his chance later this month when we go again with friends. As th saying goes..."The wise man climbs Mt. Fugi once. The foolish man climbs it again!" We arrived at the mountain at 5:15 AM, at the 5th station, which is at 7560ft. We bought the souvenir walking sticks and started up the mountain at around 5:45 A.M. It was very early for us (especially since we caught the bus to the mountain at 2AM), but we were wide awake and excited to get moving.





The trail started out very easy, on a well groomed path with a gradual ascent. So gradual and easy is the first 30 min that there is natural tendency to move a little faster, thinking "this is easy." Don't be fooled though! It gets very hard, very fast...

There were multiple "stations" during the climb that were very cool. At most of them, a stamp is "branded" onto your walkng sticks for the price of 200 Yen (about $2). In all, we ended up with 14 stamps on our sticks, including one from the top, signifying our victory over the mountain. Other climbers, headed up as we headed down, looked at our sticks and congratulated us in Japanese. The sticks were expensive, but proved very useful to help us up and slow us down during the descent. 4 hours and 35 minutes later, we arrived at the top, having climbed to 12383 ft over a trail length of 3.6 miles. The top was breathtaking. The view off the mountain was poor since there seemed to be clouds all around, but the crater was visible and very deep. The mountain last erupted in the early 1700's and there were volcanic rocks everywhere.

We grabbed a couple rocks, ate some lunch, took some photos, and then headed down the mountain. It was not an easy trip down. The trail was more groomed, but very steep. It was a different path down, taking 2 hours and 30 minutes, covering 4 1/2 miles with multiple switch backs and finally wrapping back around to where we started.

Overall, this was a great experience for us. We knew going in, it would be tough, but it still suprised us. The closest comparison we could come up with was maybe 5 hours on the stair climber at the gym...with only half the oxygen you are used to! Breaks, clif bars, and lots of water are key to success. We learned after our climb that several people have died trying to climb it in the last few months. Most of them were due to very poor weather, but some were due to just pushing too hard. Towards the top, some light-headedness would let us know we were going too fast!

Now that it is done and our legs have recovered somewhat, we are eager to try it again! It was such a great feeling being at the top, even though the oxygen level was about 60% of what we were used to at sea level. Maybe in a few weeks!