Because it's there...

This is the tallest mountain in Japan. In the US you know it as Mount Fuji. In Japan it is Fuji-San. As you can see from the sign in foreground of this picture we are at 2000 meters, that’s about 6400 feet for you imperial types, above sea level. I climbed with 2 of my American friends here, Pat and Skeet. Pat is in this photo.

Mount Fuji is divided into sections called stations. There are 10, with station 10 being at the top. The way most people climb Mount Fuji is you start at the 5th station (Gogome) which is usually around 2300 m. There are also 4 different routes which you can climb we climbed the Yoshidaguchi route which is the most commonly used route, and therefore has the most support facilities, and the most crowds.

The 5th station was a bit touristy, with many buses bringing people from Tokyo to see the mountain up close. We bought these climbing sticks here. It turns out to possibly be the best $10 I have ever spent.

So, we started the climb. We had already driven through the cloud layer, so our entire trip up was above the clouds. Until about the 7th station there is still vegetation and wildlife. After that, just volcanic rock.

The first part of the climb was actually downhill. Between the 5th and 6th station is only a rise of 80m vertically. But the first part was down hill, so really you climb about 200m. From there it only goes up, and up, and then up some more.

At the 7th station the path becomes more rugged, and you really have to climb up the mountain. Just before the 7th station Skeet and I stopped for this break.

I brought along a can of oxygen to help avoid high altitude sickness, which, I am glad to say, I didn't get. Skeet just brought smokes.

At about this same point, 2 of these bulldozers came rumbling down the mountainside. They are used to haul supplies up to the various mountain huts, and to bring the mail down from the post office at the top.

This was at the 7th station, 2700m:

The path goes where from here?



Oh yeah, up.

These are some of the mountain huts at the 7th station:

And this at the 8th station, 3100m.

Sunset at around the same place:




At most of the huts, for 200 yen, you could have your climbing stick stamped, actually woodburned. We got stamps at any station that was open.

We climbed until 8PM and arrived at our mountain side hut at the 8th station (3200m), that we had reserved in advance. This "room" cost us $63 each.

We slept, or better yet, tried to sleep in this small room, on old futons, on a hard wooden floor. My body actually kind of fell into a sleep apnea kind of state due to the high altitude. Every time that I would start to relax and fall asleep, my body would start to try to regulate my breathing like normal, but since the oxygen levels were low my body would wake me up and I would have to take several deep breaths. So, needless to say, I only slept for maybe 20 minutes total.


Then at 1:30 AM, we got up, packed up, and started the remainder of the climb. Pat and I each had head lights, and so did the other hundreds of people climbing at that time. I was really beautiful to look either up or down the mountain and see this line of lights wandering to the top. This picture really doesn't do it justice.
It took us another 2:45 to climb to the top. We made it to the top 3776m (12275 feet), and were able to see the sun rise. It was, without a doubt, the most beautiful sunrise that I have ever seen. It's not every day you get to see the sunrise, and are looking down on the clouds! (Also, compare our climbing sticks to the picture just after we bought them and see all the stamps that we collected. The $10 stick in the end turned out to be a $36 climbing stick!)


Here is an interesting science experiment the next time you are climbing up several thousand feet or so. This is a bag of Doritos at sea level atmospheric pressure:
This was the same bag at the 5th station:

And again at the top:

Because of the lower air pressure at high altitude, the air sealed inside the bag presses out on the bag, making it appear as if it was inflated. It's a little hard to tell, but the bag was basically as hard as a rock. (Engineers........)

Then we looked around the crater at the top of the mountain and headed back down. The climb down was just as difficult as the climb up. You climb down a different route, a wide path that was basically loose lava rock gravel. I slipped and fell on my back a couple of times. Finally, my quadriceps muscles began to give out, and I had to take small steps all the way down. If you look up above us in this picture you'll see some small dots. They are the people on the paths above. Trust me, it's a lot farther than it looks.

This picture is at the Torii gate that you can barely see in the picture above. While Skeet is indicating our new course heading, it is interesting to see how steep the mountain is at this point:
While on the way down we saw this person:


He had no use of his legs, but someone had devised this cart that allowed him to climb the mountain. There was a camera crew following him. Basically, he pushed the levers forward, and then the cart rolled about 6 inches up the hill. Each push was about 20kg, or 45 pounds. Imagine having to bench press 45 pounds over and over, and over, thousands of times. Made me feel like a wimp for complaining about the pains in my legs.

At the 6th station the descending path joins back together with the climbing path. If you remember back to my comments at the beginning, we started out down hill. We'll down hill on the way there means, up hill on the way back. The last kilometer was all uphill. I felt like a whipped child. I was just dragging my climbing stick behind me and plodding along, until to grandmothers passed me. Then my macho-ness kicked in, and I passed them right back and headed back into the 5th station!
Needless to say, I was dog tired:
Despite the fact that I was completely exhausted, I am really glad that I made the climb. It was the most difficult thing I have ever done, but also one of the most rewarding. And you would have to pay me a lot of money to do it again. There is a Japanese saying: "A wise man climbs Mt.Fuji once, an idiot climbs Mt.Fuji twice". And that may be true, but what idiot wouldn't want to see this view more than once: