Mt. Fuji

Vicki's Version:

As you would expect, the culture amongst those folks in the airline industry out here is full of discourse about travel: where people have been, where they want to go, what they've heard from other travelers about when to go, what to do when you get there, etc. It's basically what we all are living for out here. So a couple months ago, we were all hanging around the pool one evening when someone mentioned hiking up Mt. Fuji. A few minutes later, Matt and I were hooked--we were going to climb this famous mountain. Boy did we have starry eyes--we really had no idea what we were committing to, but we were steadfast in our stupidity. We were in pretty good shape. Ha!

The official climbing season on Mt. Fuji runs from July 1 thru August 31--it's summer time, and really the only time it's safe for novice hikers to try to reach the summit (any other time of the year you need special gear, a knowledge of how to use this special gear, etc.). Matt had the last few days of July off, so we scheduled our ascent for July 28 (Matt's b-day). On July 26 we packed up the essentials: flashlights (most people hike up in the dark to see the sunrise from the top), ponchos, gloves, granola bars, jerky, hiking boots, yen, etc., and at about 6am on July 27 we were on a Continental flight bound for Tokyo.

We arrived at the Narita airport around 9:00am. We quickly learned that getting around in Japan is pretty easy, although not exactly easy on the pocketbook, especially if once you get to the airport you want to actually go other places besides the airport. Whether you take a taxi or an "airport limousine" (which is actually just a big yellow bus) it's gonna cost ya. So we hopped on our 10:00am "stretch" to the Shinjuku station in downtown Tokyo. Very quickly after we arrived in Shinjuku we located an information desk with a sign that said "English" prominently displayed above it. As you can imagine, a welcome sight, given our extensive two-word Japanese vocabulary. True to it's promise, the young woman behind the desk spoke excellent English and was able to make us a reservation on the next bus to the Fuji Go-Ko area.

For reasons we will probably never, ever understand, our bus to Fuji Go-Ko looked like Thomas the Train had thrown-up all over it.

Fuji is surrounded by five lakes (Fuji Go-Ko means Fuji Five Lakes). Most people who wish to hike it stay in the Kawaguchi-ko lake area, since it's an easy bus ride up to the Kawaguchi-ko 5th station (the mountain trail is divided into 10 stations), which is the spot where most people begin their ascent. But given the fact that most visitors stay in this area, that the hiking season is a brief 2 months each year, and the fact that the average number of hikers tops 300,000 annually meant we had to stay somewhere else. We ended up staying in the nearby quaint mountain town of Yoshida.

Although the trail starting at the Kawaguchi-ko 5th station (2300m) is the most popular, there are actually several trails up the mountain. When planning this trip, we took it as a given that we would also begin and end at the Kawaguchi-ko 5th station, even though we knew there were longer more strenuous options. Somewhere between Guam and Tokyo one of us nutjobs suggested that we should hike up from the very bottom of the mountain, on the Yoshidaguchi trail, and the other nutjob agreed this was a good idea. I'm only using the word nutjob because although we like to hike it's not something we do very often (maybe once every two months), because running 25 min. 3x a week hardly prepares you for hiking up a mountain, and because the summit of Fuji is 3776m (12388 ft.). Sure, why not.

Our first glimpse of Fuji, from the town of Yoshida, the evening of our arrival.

Even though the weather report had declared rain, the next day we got up around 8:00 to sunshine so we decided to go for it. First, we needed to take care of breakfast, which I had arranged for us with our online reservation...the thought being that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, esp. if you're going to scale the side of a mountain. No description was given, I had just checked the "yes" box next to 'breakfast'...a small, seemingly innocuous little gray box in the upper right-hand corner of my screen. We were shown to the small hotel dining room, with high hopes for some sort of bread products and coffee. Looking on the bright side, we can chalk up that breakfast as a "cultural experience". Here's what was on our trays: cold, smoked skin-on fish with a thick brown sauce, pickled beets, a barely-poached therefore very slimy cold egg floating in a not-so-tasty-looking brown sauce, head lettuce with cherry tomatoes, pickled cucumbers, rice and miso soup. Not exactly IHOP. Matt looked up at me with a look of pained revulsion. We didn't want to be rude, so we did our best to make everything look nibbled on. I was SO proud of Matt for choking down as much of it as he did, because even though he has proven to be very adventuresome when it comes to food, this little meal was beyond both of us. But now we know first-hand what Japanese breakfast is like, which I do think is cool.

So it happened this fast: we had breakfast, got our packs, stopped by a mom and pop sporting goods shop for a hat (after having listened to the guy rifal around in the back for ten minutes before he emerged with this canary yellow and rainbow striped gem of a ski hat, we're pretty sure it was the only ski cap they had in stock, and that it had been there since 1972), and suddenly we were walking towards the base of the trail at Sengen shrine. We stopped at the entrance of the shrine to say prayers for a safe climb, give an offering (you throw yen through a metal grate in the floor), and purchase some hiking sticks (at the 5th-10th stations there is someone who will brand your stick to show how far you've made it, for the bargain price of 200 yen, or two bucks a pop), and we were on our way.

A big part of why we decided to hike from the base was that if you start at the 5th station, you miss a lot of the prettier part of the climb, so for the first four hours we were mainly in a wooded forest. Right off, we had a little problem. Or more accurately, I had a little problem. See I've "hiked" in that Matt and I have driven to 3-4 hour trails, gone for a nice, occasionally laborious trek, and then come back, climbed in the car and taken off, usually for a comfortable hotel. I have not hiked with a pack that is supposed to last me for 24+ hours. This sucker was starting to produce a walnut-sized knot in between my shoulder blades, and it had started bothering me walking around back in town, before we had even officially started the climb (yes, I felt like a wuss). So of course I was thinking, yeah, if it's bothering me now, it's gonna hurt like a %#@* after seven hours. As I realized my mistake in not factoring in the added strain of a 5-10 lb. pack on my back when I agreed to this climb, the words "oh *&#@" were going through my head. I was worried about telling Matt, although I knew I had to, because I so wanted to be his wife the badass. I wanted him to at least have the option at social gatherings to introduce us as Matt and his wife, badass, if he felt so inclined. And here I was, not even an hour into this 12+ hour commitment, with a gnawing pain in my back. Well, I finally came out with it, there was some stressful back and forth about whether this was a very good idea after all, and we finally ended up switching packs and shoving on.

And thank God we did! One of the coolest realizations I took away from this experience was just how awesome the human body is. That whatever you think you're capable of, you're actually capable of fifty times more. That hash run we did on Guam couldn't hold a candle to this challenge.

The fact that the mountain was divided into stations helped move the ascent along, giving us small achievable goals to aim for. Between the 2nd and 3rd stations we passed the Nyonin Tenjo, or Women's Holy Ground, the spot which up until 1832 was the highest women were allowed to go. The steeper the trail got, the more I found myself kind of zoning out, which I guess is bound to happen during strenuous monotonous challenges, so I tried to constantly force myself to be aware of my surroundings and soak it all in as much as I could, since I knew without a doubt I would never, ever, EVER attempt this a second time. We kept a pretty constant pace, only stopping briefly to eat a power bar and recharge our engines a little.

Our goal for the first day was to reach our hut at the highest point on the 7th station (almost the 8th station). We arrived about 6pm, and I was so happy to be there I swear to God I almost kissed the floor. My legs ached like crazy but I felt great we had made it that far. I've never been so grateful to see a Western-style toilet as I was at this moment, esp. since I was not expecting to have the option--if you're not familiar with Eastern toilets, they're basically urinals in the ground that you squat over, and there's NO WAY my thigh muscles could have handled it. I seriously would have had to pee on all fours or something, and I can't imagine I would have enjoyed that much. No one in the hut spoke English, so they ushered us around as best they could and pointed to a spot on the mats near a big pot that we could warm ourselves by. A English-speaking guide named Chris came over and introduced himself and gave us the low-down on where we would sleep, when we could resume the hike, etc. We ate dinner: half a Cup-a-Noodle, the BEST Snickers of my life, a granola bar, some water. Sleep was all we could think about, so we made a B-line for our sleeping bags. The sleeping arrangements are basically an over sized bunk bed: a row of sleeping bags on the floor and a row of sleeping bags on a wooden loft above them. You just crawl in and sleep in your clothes. You had to sleep boy-girl...even with limited English, it was clear there would be hell to pay if Matt didn't sleep where the blue pillow was and I didn't sleep where the red pillow was. Getting actual sleep is tricky--there's constant noise from people passing outside, people shuffling in and out at all hours, and in my case, a person falling off the ladder right next to my head (poor guy!). But it was enough to get us ready for the next leg of our hike.

Video hiking up Fuji--if I walked any slower I would have been standing still. It was so freaking hard!


We thought about getting up at midnight with everyone else to reach the summit for the sunrise, but we decided to "sleep in" until 4:00 instead. We needed the rest, and this way we avoided the groups, usually of 30-50 people, that can create actual waiting lines up the mountain. My main concern was "will I be able to move my legs". I'd never put my body through something like this before, so I seriously didn't know how they would respond to the abuse. They moved, but my legs have never hurt so much in my life! I also started to feel a little nauseous, which made me a little worried about altitude sickness (people get it pretty frequently). Luckily, half a power bar and water cured me, and we headed for the trail.

Breakfast at the 9th station--Udon noodles

One of the smaller, rainbow colored tour groups.

"Ralphie", the Asian version. ('I can't put my arms down!!')

I hope the length of this blog entry conveys the never-ending nature of this hiking experience. Even after all we had achieved, there was still a lot to go. After four hours of scrambling over steep volcanic rock we finally made it. At first we didn't realize we were actually at the top, and after all that work we didn't want to celebrate until we were absolutely sure we didn't have more work ahead of us. So Matt went inside one of the "shops" to ask if we were at the 10th station. When he came out and confirmed that indeed this was the 10th station and we had kicked this mountain's butt I started jumping up and down. Of course we weren't actually "done". We still had the one-hour hike around the crater at the top, plus the four-hour descent. The views were outstanding--it was so amazing to be at such an altitude that we were looking down on the clouds. I kept exclaiming this thought to Matt and asked what he thought, and he was like, yeah, I kind of see a lot of this, flying planes for a living and all. Right. Anyway, we were both stoked to have made it. During the climb it had popped into my head many, many times that I might not make it to the top, so it felt so awesome to finally be able to celebrate the knowledge that my sorry butt had in fact climbed to the top of Fuji.

Hiking through a cloud near the summit.

Couldn't have made it without my stick.

I fell in love with the Japanese on this trip! From the time we got there, 99% of everyone we encountered offered warm smiles and hellos and help when we needed it. If you said hello, you always got a hello back (I've walked past people in my own neighborhood and had them completely ignore me when I greet them or smile). I love their off-beat and courageous fashion sense, their hip haircuts, their desire to take pictures with complete strangers, and their compulsion to capture every single life experience, no matter how seemingly insignificant or mundane, permanently on film. They are certainly different from Americans, but I think it's amusing and interesting. I felt really at home in a place full of upbeat, enthusiastic people, who don't care that their zest for life may come off as dorky. I just kept thinking--I fit in really well with these people!

It looks affecionate, but really Matt's just holding me up to keep me from collapsing into a heap.


Matt's Version:

Uhhh, yeah. Heres my two cents. Climbing Mt. Fuji is one of those experiences that will stay with me forever. We got a little ambitious climbing the entire route from the bottom, but we persevered and I was really proud of Vickis ability to challenge herself and put mind over matter and reach the summit. It was two really full days of high altitude hiking and we were pretty much physically and emotionally spent by the end. Using a bag of rice as a pillow was a first, but we were so tired it didn't matter too much. We were very fortunate to have good weather. The clouds looked quite ominous as we neared the summit, but we stayed dry and a few hours after sunrise they burned off and we had a pristine view from the top.

Visiting Japan has been something I've always wanted to do since we were little kids when we had Japanese foreign exchange students stay with us. We didn't allow any time to do much else but climb Fuji on this trip but it definitely sparked our interest in other areas of Japan that we hope to visit soon. We found the people in and around Fuji to be very welcoming and hospitable. Below are some of the pictures we took along our route up Fuji-san.


The Sengen Temple at the bottom of Mt. Fuji marking the original beginning of the trail. This is where we started our trek.

A cool picture of Vic just after sunrise.

Hiking up just before sunrise. Only 3 hours to go to the summit. I can't believe she's smiling.

I was glad to have my new ski hat, even if it had been in the little shop owners back room since 1980.

Probably the cheepest birthday dinner Vicki will ever have to spring for. It was actually quite a nice and welcome meal after our long day.

This is what I look like after paying $5 for a really tiny hot chocolate and having to pose in front of it before consumption. It tasted oh so good. A nice refresher to propel me up the mountain. The cup o noodles at $6.50 was out of our price range.

Above the clouds on Fuji.

Vicki and Matt reach the summit of Mt. Fuji after 10+ hrs of hiking and about a 10,000 feet ascent. The highest point in Japan at 12,434 feet. I feel for the guy that had to carry that slab of granite up there.