Japan Trip Part 3– Mt Fuji

Hi, this is the third chapter of our Japan trip in July. It’s by far the longest and if it has taken a while to load, I apologize.
A little background before the pictures….
One of most important reasons we chose to visit Tokyo was to climb Mt. Fuji.
As the tallest mountain in Japan and spiritual appeal to locals, Fuji-san is certainly the most revered mountain in Japan. It’s said that a wise man climbs Fuji-san once, but a fool climbs it twice.
We certainly enjoyed our climb, and the following is a brief synopsis highlighted with our photos.
Fuji-san is a freestanding volcano (similar to Mt Kilimanjaro in Africa) with the summit 12,388 ft above sea level. The mountain is divided into 10 stations. The most popular place to begin (and where we started) is from the 5th station at about 7,000 ft.
Since we climbed right in the middle of the “official” climbing season, we expected large numbers of people to join us on the trek to the summit. While we never had to wait in line to continue the hike, we did meet lots of interesting people. Almost from the very beginning, we met 2 other young American couples climbing. They lived in Tokyo and worked at Tokyo Disney (sound familiar, Rob??). We all got along well, and basically ended up climbing the entire mountain together.
Since large crowds were expected, we decided to climb through the night to arrive at the summit around sunrise. So, we left our hotel at about 8 PM to catch a bus that would take us to the fifth station.
We actually began hiking at about 11:30 PM. The sunrise was at 4:40 AM, so that gave us about 5 hours to reach the summit in time. Unfortunately, we didn’t quite make it up to the very top, but we stopped at the station right below the crater rim to enjoy one of the most spectacular sunrises ever.
Truly, the sunrise from the top a mountain is breath taking and one from a “free-standing” mountain is unbelievable. I’ll let you decide for yourself though….
Here’s Anna right before the sun peeked out from under the clouds.



One downside to the top of the mountain is that it was VERY windy (notice my hood is about to fly away…) As we got closer to the top, the wind became almost unbearable. It even made the wind in Colorado seem gentle in comparison. The worst part was that the wind carried the fine, gritty volcanic dust and it was impossible to protect your eyes from it. If you ever climb Mt. Fuji yourself, remember your ski goggles….they would have been HUGELY beneficial.



Here we are enjoying a hot cup of cocoa trying to avoid the wind/dust. This is the inside of the 9th station. We rested here for a little while before the final push to the top.





Once we’d thoroughly warmed up and were ready to brave the wind again, we headed back out for the final ascent. It was even worse than before. At times the wind was so strong, I could not stand in place. I estimate that the wind gusts were over 80 MPH. If the trail had been treacherous, I would have turned our group around, but it was just safe enough to continue. We eventually made it to the top and here’s what the top of a volcano that last erupted in 1707 looks like:



There are even enough visitors to the top to support a mall of sorts. It was still closed when we arrived, but interesting to see nonetheless.

A view from the top of Japan…

Looking back down at station 9:


This is as close to snow as we’ve been in the last year:




Well, after hours of slogging up the mountain, we finally got to come back down. Here the soft soil made it very easy to move quickly with very low impact. 🙂 Unfortunately, that meant we got even dirtier than before! Here’s proof:

We were excited to be done though.

Fuji-san graced us with a brief appearance from behind the haze and clouds and allowed a view to where we had been.

Here’s what most people did after climbing 🙂 Pass out in the middle of the plaza.