Landscape Photos | Photos Of The Climbers | Youtube Video (Soon!)
They say it’s one of the things you have to do in Japan. I’ve been asked by plenty of people, both Japanese and foreign, if I’d ever climbed it. Despite the hype, I’d never really understood why it was heralded as such an experience. I understood that it was a big mountain, with pretty views and an important role in Japanese tradition. Sure, it was something I wanted to do some day. Because my dad is a mountain maniac, I’ve been up plenty of mountains in my time, and it’s never really gripped me as something exciting.
Until now, that is. I can’t believe I’m writing this, but I really ‘got’ why people go mountain climbing now. I am aware I just signed myself up to thousands of walks with my dad, but whatever. The five of us had an amazing experience and, despite the sunburn and horrendous pain of Aerosinusitis, I’d say this was the single greatest thing I’ve done in Japan.
This is the brave team that stomped up the mountain. (L-R Andy, Me, Ralph, Saori, Leon). Rather than cover this blog in pictures of us sweating and displaying symptoms of mountain madness (at one point Saori was convinced we were being chased by mountain ghosts) I have put all the photos of us here.
Anyway, after taking photos at the 5th station, changing into the sharp clothes you see in the photo above, and meeting up with our guide and the rest of our group, we set off. We were optimistic, not knowing that the average walking speed for a Japanese mountain group is about the same as a tour designed specifically for snails. “Why don’t we bloody well hurry up?!” would become a theme, nay a chant, for most of the ascent. Since we started at the fifth station, which is near the cloud line already, it didn’t take long before the views became spectacular.
It was a quite cloudy day when we were ascending, but honestly once you’re above the clouds it’s not a problem. Unfortunately I couldn’t take any sweeping photos of the Japanese countryside, but I did get plenty of pictures of clouds! The sky itself was a rich clear blue, so it wasn’t really an issue.
If you climb from the very base of the mountain, you spend an entire day walking through fields that are basically flat. So everyone goes from Station 5. On the first day, we made it to station 8, which is within striking distance of the summit. What’s amazing is that there are like 5-6 ‘hotels’ situated at station 8, which is over 3000 meters above sea level. So from 7pm until 1am, we slept at station 8. Or we tried to. There’s no beds. Just rows of sleeping bags.
We set off again at 1.30am, and headed for the summit. We joined what looked like a candlelit vigil – hundreds of people walking in lines, their torches creating a glittering snake, weaving it’s way up the mountain. It was pitch black and very cold. We were also getting very high, and breathing was becoming difficult. It was at this point that Saori came down with altitude sickness, and couldn’t go on. She returned to station 8 with Leon to sleep off the illness, whilst Andy, Ralph and I continued upwards. It was a big shame as they didn’t get to witness the view from the summit, but I’ll just make them go next year instead.
We reached the summit of the mountain about 10 minutes before sunrise. Those ten minutes were bitterly cold and depressing. But humans are funny things – once the sun’s there, we’re happy. The view that greeted us was unbelievable. These photos can’t do justice to the experience, but here they are anyway.
This is the view just before the sun broke through the horizon line. The rate at which the sky illuminated was amazing. Also, the multilingual chorus of ‘Ooh!’ from everyone at the summit was fun.
This is the most beautiful sight you can imagine. The sun slowly moves up through the horizon line, and the entire sky looks like it’s burst into flame. I took video of this on my little camera, so I’ll put that in a video, but again cameras and so on struggle with this sort of thing. It’s not really the same unless you’re there, anyway. It was mind blowing, it really felt like we were watching some surrealist film.
Not really much I can say about this, except if I had to title it, I’d call it “Japan: The Photograph”. Mt. Fuji. Shrine. Tourists.
We stayed at the top for about 30-40 minutes. It was still very cold and there was some wind blowing, but the views were taking everyone’s mind off it. Eventually though, we had to succumb to the temperature, and began our descent. This is where the whole experience went kind of rubbish. Getting down to station 8 wasn’t too difficult, but after we ate breakfast we spent about three hours very slowly winding our way down paths made up of loose rocks. The sun was beating down mercilessly. My sunburn is pretty bad, and my lips are so chapped they are currently bright red. People keep complimenting me on my choice of lipstick. I would say the descent was more challenging than the ascent in some ways, although that’s probably due to the lack of sleep and exhaustion. I did take my favourite photo of the day on the way down, though.
I think that’s a nice way to end this post. I would recommend climbing Fuji over pretty much any other experience in Japan, although I recommend you read up on it first. There’s a lot that can go wrong, and nothing is worse than coming close then not being able to ascend. All in all, an amazing experience. Can’t wait to get forced to do it again by my father in a year’s time!
Landscape Photos | Photos Of The Climbers | Youtube Video (Soon!)
