Scaling Fuji-san

Mt. Fuji is one of the most iconic images from Japan. At 12,388ft (3776m) it's Japan's tallest mountain, and an active volcano. It towers over the surrounding landscape, many thousands of feet higher then anything in the vicinity. Located sixty miles southwest of Tokyo, it can even be seen on a clear day from the city.

As it turns out, since I arrived during the rainy season here in Japan with few clear days, the first time I got to lay eyes on the mountain I was standing on top of it.

I had the good fortune of meeting someone at the SoA pub night, within a week of arriving to Tokyo, who was planning a trip to climb Mt. Fuji with her coworkers on the second week in July. She graciously extended me an invitation to join the crew and I jumped at the chance.

The plan was to leave Friday evening climb through the night and watch the sunrise over Japan from the summit. It felt a little odd working all day Friday, knowing that instead of heading off to a bar after work I was going to climb a mountain. I've climbed larger peaks in the past, but it was always a journey just to get to them, which allowed some time to put of psychological space between everyday routine and the adventure. With Mt. Fuji it was like deciding on a whim to go watch the sunrise from the hill in you're backyard, except that the hill was over 12,000ft high.

After work I met up with the rest of the crew at Shinjuku station, where we got on the 7:30 bus that took us directly to the 5th Station at Mt. Fuji. The 5th Station is the standard starting spot for the climb up my Fuji, located at about 7,500ft above sea level. The bus trip took about 2 hours.

By the time we arrived at the staging area it was well after dark. Mt. Fuji loomed over us unseen in the darkness. We got started down the trail at 10pm. From the 5th Station it usually takes 5-7 hours to reach the summit. Sunrise would be around 3:45-4am. Even this relatively low elevation offered good views of the surrounding area. We could see the lights of Tokyo and other cities in the distance. The low cloud cover turned orange by the city lights stretched out below us.

Unfortunately the camera didn't quite capture how cool this looked.

The trail started off with a flat to moderate pitch traverse. This made for fairly easy going until we reached the 6th station, which was really just a small police hut that warned people not to continue on without cold weather gear. After the 6th station the trail turned sharply upwards and proceeded pretty much in a straight shot right up to the summit. I was a little surprised by the steepness of the terrain. I was kind of expecting a walk, but ended up having to do a fair amount sustained scrambling for about 5,000ft to the summit.

The trail up to the summit was punctuated by stations 7, 8, and 9, and several other smaller rest huts, that sold progressively more expensive supplies. Trekking through the wilderness this was not, but the huts were old, small, and rustic enough for it not to feel like some commercial ride.

We made it to within a couple hundred feet of the summit when we saw the first bit of pre-dawn light.

As the light slowly got brighter, the landscape below was revealed and we realized just how high above everything we were. It was like looking down from an airplane window.
Those little hills way down there are actually mountains themselves.
Hiking up Mt. Fuji is a very popular activity, near the summit there was a bit of a traffic jam.

The main cause being this shrine marking the entrance to the summit. At the shrine many people like to stop and take pictures, holding up everyone else. At the summit it was freezing, and once you stopped moving you definitely felt the cold. I was a bit unprepared, I had brought layers but I really could have used a winter jacket and a warm hat.

Here's me trying and failing I think not to look cold and sleepy.
Here's the rest of the crew doing a better job of it. That's me in the goofy orange hat that I borrowed because my head was cold. These pictures are all courtesy of Myleen, who is on the left in the red jacket.

I was feeling the altitude pretty bad at this point. A splitting headache, shortness of breath, kind of feels like a hangover due to the dehydration. I drank about 4 liters of water on the way up but it still wasn't enough. I've climbed taller peaks then Mt. Fuji, but always after a few days of acclimatization at altitude. Here I went from sea level to 12, 300ft in less then 7 hours.
Mt. Fuji is an active volcano, it last erupted in 1708. This is the crater.

The trail down was different then the one up. It consisted of long, wide switchbacks of loose volcanic sand. The way down was probably more treacherous then the way up, the sand was sliding everywhere and it was easy to loose your footing. With the fatigue factor it was easy to see people rolling their ankles or worse on the way down. When this picture was taken it was about 6am, I had already been up for 24 hours.

Once we got down it took us another 3 hours to get back to Tokyo. You would think we would then go right to bed, instead one of the guys invited us back to his place for a Barbecue. We arrived around 2-3pm to find an American and a Brazilian (more coworkers of theirs) who had been drinking all day and preparing food for us, including hand made sausage. Pretty sweet way to end the trip.

If your curious to see what I look like after 36 hours with no sleep and 12,ooo vertical ft, here you go.

I call that my le tired face.

Overall great experience, it was nice to get out of the concrete jungle for a change. One of the really great aspects to Tokyo is the proximity to really anything you would want to do outside. You've got massive mountains and the ocean both right there. Definitely won't be my last Japan mountaineering adventure.