Mt. Fuji- The Highest Mountain in Japan

On June 17^th and 18^th, Adam and I took our last trip in Japan to Mt. Fuji. If you remember how Adam called the day trips I planned a boot camp- you’ll wonder why after reading about his plan for Mt. Fuji.

Friday morning, we rose at 5:15am and took the first train to Nagoya. From Nagoya we took a bus to Kawaguchiko. Then, we made our way down to one of the lakes. The area we were in has 5 lakes and it’s all around the base of Mt. Fuji. We checked out an herb festival which was almost all lavender, walked by the lake, and had a picnic lunch.

Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t conducive to picture taking because it was raining. The clouds were low, so we couldn’t see the mountains, let alone Mt. Fuji. Adam chose to go to Kawaguchiko because it has the most famous view of Mt. Fuji with the lakes, so we missed out on that view. Considering that June is the rainy season, I still think the weather we had was pretty good.

 

The lake

Lava

Herb Festival

Lavender

Hydrangeas

Since we couldn’t see Mt. Fuji, we decided to go on a hike through the forest where the ground is all hardened lava. We took the winding bus around the lake and were both happy to get off since it was making us nauseous. After disembarking, we had the task of finding the trail head. We walked down the road and then back to where we had been dropped off. We decided to walk along the road for a while and check out the bird sanctuary since we couldn’t find the trail head and didn’t really want to go wandering off into the forest on one of the other paths. The bird sanctuary wasn’t much of anything, but we did learn what other animals were in the area, including badgers and wild boars. Finally, we decided to keep walking to a different bus stop when lo and behold we found a trail head and went for a nice 2km walk through this lava forest. It was pretty cool. We came out at a different bus stop, went back into town, and ate tempura for supper. We were staying about an hour away at a different town, so we took another bus to that town.

This is at the bird sanctuary.

Our hike through the lava forest.

Tempura for supper

 The next morning, we woke up at 5am, an hour before we needed to, and Adam got the news that his grandma had passed away. We were able to talk to his mom which was good. From our hotel window, we had a beautiful view of Mt. Fuji- Adam had requested a room with a view of Mt. Fuji and he got it J. Our hotel had a very delicious complimentary breakfast and we both ate a lot before heading to the bus stop. We got to the stop around 7am and the bus only arrived at 7:30 am, we thought it would be busy and we wanted a good seat on the bus. As it turned out, there was only one other guy on the bus. It took about 1 hour to get to the Gotemba 5^th station and we took the Subashiri trail to up Mt. Fuji. At this station, there were a few little shops and we each bought a wooden hiking pole for 1100 yen (about $11) each. That is the best 1100 yen I’ve ever spent. I’m pretty sure I would have either died or permanently injured my legs without it. The people at the shop were really nice and gave us some salty broth to drink before we left too, which I think was very good for us. The toilets at this station were 200 yen each, so we opted for the bush. Mt. Fuji is almost as expensive as Venice for toilets!

View of Mt. Fuji from our hotel room.

Going through clouds on the bus ride up the mountain.

At Gotemba 5th Station

We set off at a good pace. We had to get to the summit and then back down another trail to catch the last bus at 6pm and we didn’t want to miss that bus and be stuck on the volcano overnight. Hiking season doesn’t start until July, so the huts along the trail aren’t open yet, so we would have to stay outside in the cold if we missed our bus. So, we started up this colossal mountain. Mt. Fuji is 3776 m high so people can suffer from altitude sickness while hiking. The bus dropped us off at 1900 m so we had to climb the remaining 1876 m of altitude . The Subashiri trail was fairly treed, but we were using our hiking sticks immediately to help push ourselves up big lava rocks, etc. As soon as we started out, about 3 men passed us- running up the mountain. They didn’t have poles, they had running shoes, not hiking boots, and were just carrying a little water- they were crazy.

At the sixth station, we took a little water break and drank a bit of our electrolyte drinks. At the seventh station, we ate a pita with some falafel. We didn’t want to eat too much, but just enough to sustain us. There were people at this station setting up for hiking season to start. At this seventh station, we lost track of where we were on the trail. Part of the problem is that there are multiple seventh stations and eighth stations, so it was hard to figure out at which one we were. Adam kept asking people along the way and we often got mixed answers. The main reason we needed to know where we were was in case we didn’t have time to summit and had to turn back early and take the same path down to catch the last 3:45 pm bus from the Gotemba station.

After the seventh station, the real work began. I started getting out of breath every few steps. Previously, we had stopped often to catch our breath and to wait until our heart had stopped pounding in our ears, but now we were stopping more often. There’s less oxygen up there and we were noticing it. I felt a headache coming on. As we neared the eighth station, which was to be our turn around point if we couldn’t summit, I was ready to give up. We had been hiking straight up for over three hours, sometimes walking up this deep dirt that was the equivalent of hiking through sand or snow. We’d take a step and slide backwards a little. I kept having to rest. I felt like I had just played about three games of ultimate Frisbee in a row and I really didn’t think my body could take it. My legs were literally shaking. We got to what we thought was the eighth station and I was going to break the news to Adam- that I couldn’t go on. We still had about 2-3 hours of hiking.

 I told Adam that I thought we should go back and he said, “You can do it, but will you let me help you?”

 I laughed a little and asked, “How are you going to help me?”

“I’ll carry your bag.”

Adam was already carrying pretty much everything except my water, but I accepted. I don’t think it was a wise decision on Adam’s part. One Japanese man on the trail pointed and said, “Good idea.” I said, “I think so too.” Later he passed us resting and asked, “One more baggage?” He wanted Adam to carry his bag too. Somewhere between the seventh and the eighth station one of the men who had passed us running up passed us again running down. That just proves that he’s crazy and in incredibly good shape.

The hike

In the clouds

Adam started carrying my bag a little before we reached the Torii gate.

 We continued on, we didn’t stop for food because we were hard pressed for time. At about 2pm we got to the ninth station. We asked the guys there, just to make sure we knew where we were. They told us, “Summit.” Well, you should’ve seen me smile and laugh- this was seriously the best part of the day. I thought I still had an hour to go and I found out that we had made it to the top! I was so relieved. It only took us 5 hours to climb even though it seemed like we were going really slowly. The guides said it would take 5-7 hours. We walked around part of the crater and of course took some pictures before taking the Fujinomiya trail down. We couldn’t spend too much time at the top since it was already 2:30 and it was supposed to take 3-5 hours to get down and the last bus was at 6pm.

The view from the top was rather anti-climactic. It was so cloudy that really all you could see were the clouds. On the hike, we were either in clouds or above them, only once did we get a glimpse of the land below, so the hike really wasn’t very scenic. The clouds up there move so quickly, so what was a good picture one second was all clouds the next. It didn’t seem terribly windy though. Most of the time, I was looking down at lava rock/gravel to watch my footing. The popular way to hike Mt. Fuji is to hike up to the eighth station during the day, sleep for a few hours and then climb the rest of the way at night to watch the sunrise at the top. I think doing that would be really dangerous since the path is so steep and rocky. But, that’s the thing to do. I’ve heard the sunrise is rather anti-climactic as well. One guy said, “I could see this from an airplane.” He also named his video “Climbing Mt. Fuji: 8 hours of hell” so you can imagine his impression of it.

The crater at the summit

Representing at the summit

We're above the clouds!

 We started down. We only stopped briefly to eat a couple handfuls of almonds to have some sustenance. There were some snowy parts going down and I ended up slipping and sliding on my bum down one of them which I think was the easiest way to go down. I never have felt so healthy and strong as I did coming down the mountain. I sometimes have dreams where I’m running and not getting tired and just feel great and that was like this experience. I was holding onto the ropes, when they had them, with one hand and using my walking pole with the other to go down these steep rocks as quickly as possible. I felt like my body was floating while being thrown too and fro down the mountain. I think partly why I felt so strong was because I kept getting more and more oxygen. It’s hard to describe the feeling. Needless to say, that I definitely needed a hiking pole, my knees would’ve been completely shot without it. After 2-2.5 hours we could see the parking lot, but distances are deceiving so we didn’t want to take too long. We kept going at a good speed, the further we got down, the better the path got and by 5:30pm we were at the bus stop- half an hour before we needed to be. We were relieved. We drank some water, ate some food, and stretched. This 5^th station is a very popular way to climb the mountain so it has a well-developed station, but everything was closed. The view was beautiful though, we could see the summit above us and the clouds below us and the sun was shining. The people who took the bus down with us actually didn’t climb the mountain, but only took the bus up to the 5th station to look at the mountain. For some reason, the bus driver didn’t leave until 6:20 or so which is really unheard of in Japan. We were wondering if he was giving the last hikers on the mountain a little extra time, but no one else got on the bus.

On the way down

We took the bus and then a shinkansen the rest of the way home that night. On the way, we noticed that one of our bottles got completely sucked in (see picture). I’m thinking it’s because it was open where there was less oxygen and then coming down to a lower altitude with more oxygen created this pressure on the outside to make it collapse- kind of cool though.

 

That was our trip to Mt. Fuji. I wouldn't recommend climbing it and I didn't particularly enjoy it, but in the end I'm glad that we climbed to the top of the highest mountain in Japan.