On the Road to Fuji

I packed my backpack the night before and rushed to the station to make sure to catch the bus on time. I was eager to climb and ready to rush up Mt Fuji before I even stepped on the bus. The bus, however, took 8 hours to reach the mountain. It was an O.K. bus though.
This is a scenery pic from one of our rest stops on the way to the mountain.
This is a scenery pic from inside the bus which I'm posting mostly for the purpose of embarrassing those who were able to fall asleep on the ride over (I was not among them, unfortunately).
I actually took this picture on the way to Fukui from the Tokyo orientation a few weeks ago. That is Mt Fuji in the background.

Most people seem to say the same thing after climbing Fuji, "That was a beautiful, but I'm never going to do it again." You see, as popular as it is with tourists, Fuji is a surprisingly arduous climb. Never mind the packs of battle-hardened elderly women who climb it, for young and old alike it is a mighty difficult task. Many in our group said that this trip left them more exhausted than anything else they've experienced.

The inevitable question after reaching the peak in a state of near physical collapse is, "was it worth it all?" I imagine it must be a bit like childbirth. Extreme exhaustion and pain followed by one of life's most beautiful moments. Is it worth it?
Probably not, but people keep doing it anyway.

Mountain Vending

The climb up Mt Fuji includes 9 steps before reaching the peak. At each step is a station with food and drink for sale. There's also a hotel and a first aid center at one step. Most people begin at the Fifth Station since that's where the bus parking is located. From step 5 it can take anywhere from 5-8 hours on average to reach the peak depending on your pace and congestion near the top.
Here's an example of a typical station menu in English. Prices are probably more than double what is typical because it's no easy task to bring these items up the mountain. Yes, that last item is oxygen. Cans of oxygen are available to help tourists deal with the thinning atmosphere.
This vending machine is more than 3,700 meters (12,140 ft) above sea level. Those are clouds in the background.

Fuji Sunrise

Most people climb Fuji at night in hopes of viewing the sunrise from the peak. The crowd is so large, however, that many people who would have otherwise reached the peak by sunrise are backed up somewhere between the last station and their goal when the sun comes out.
All of these photographs were taken in between the last station and the peak.
The group broke up into pairs, trios and small packs of climbing partners before we began the trail. Many people, however, reached the top with someone other than their original climbing partner. I started out with two climbing partners and ended up spending most of the trail with someone else whom I bumped into along the way as my pace veered from the others.
Shortly after my new climbing partner and I began hiking together we decided to pass the time playing a game. Since the game was the road trip classic "let's see who can keep silent the longest" most of my hike was really quiet. It started as a simple children's game, but the competitive drive soon overtook us and other hikers from the group began to wonder if we were out on some Fuji religious experience that demanded a vow of silence.
Actually, though, having once spent a week on a silent religious retreat, I can vouch for the worthiness of silence, especially when in awe of nature. It's also fun to see what gestures people come up with for such things as, "so, am I really stuck with you for the rest of this hike?", "how far to the peak?" and "I think I'd like to buy a hiking stick at the next station."

While resting at one station I overhead another pair of hikers from our group admiring the constellations. One of them really knew what he was talking about and began pointing out various groupings of stars and their modern day use in company logos and designs throughout East Asia. Then, my climbing partner took a notepad out of her bag and wrote down what would be our first completely understood sentence since the beginning of the silence,

"I have gas from the french fries"

富士山

This is the entrance to the Shinto shrine atop Mt Fuji. The path between the last station and the shrine is packed worse than the lineup of 14 year old girls outside of an N'Sync concert. By the way, Amber, Lance Bass is still gay.
This stone marks the name of the shrine. Really the only characters I recognized were 富士山 (Mt Fuji)
As I climbed up the mountain gradually losing any shred of energy, I just kept telling myself, "I've been higher than this before - much higher! This should not be such a rough climb." But, no matter how hard I tried to convince myself of how easy Fuji should be, it just kept getting harder and harder to press upward. By the time I reached the peak it had been nearly 24 hours since I had last slept and I had been ready to pass out in exhaustion several hours before that. Yet, somehow, breaking off the trail and taking a look back over the clouds rejuvinated me. I felt as if a cool breeze had granted me new lungs. This would all fall apart on the descent, of course, but for a brief moment the spirit of the same mountain that killed my physical resolve restored my life.
Another surprise to tear apart the "I've been higher" mantra was the fact that I had never seen a view like this before. On the Peru blog I have pictures of mountain scenery far beyond this altitude yet nothing of this magnitude. The Andes moutain pictures are mountains surrounded by other mountains, but Fuji is an island in the clouds. You beat your body for 6 hours to reach a peak surround by hundreds of other climbers only to look out at the expanse of the sunrise and realize suddenly that the whole climb has been between the mountain and you alone.

When You Come Back Down

Those who make it to the top of Fuji take a different route down. Although faster than the climb, it is more difficult due to stress on the knees and the gravel and dust. By the time we reached our bus at station 5 our faces were so dirty some of us were somewhat hard to recognize.

By the way, in case if you were wondering, this is what the inside of a cloud looks like.