Mt. Fuji is a cold, desolate, ugly mountain that is prone to extreme weather no matter what month of the year. The dust and rocks/boulders are challenging and extremely annoying. The mountain is just rock, rock and more rock both up and on the way down. It is, after all, a volcano. The climb starts at a relatively high altitude and is quite steep in places; so we had a few “dropouts” early on during our climb. (They ended up spending the night at the lower lodging huts until the guides picked them up the next day.) Altitude sickness also hit a few climbers as we all headed towards the 12,340 ft. summit; as most of our group did not live near mountains or climb on a regular basis. Our guides told us that some of the most fit people experience altitude sickness.
We were the first of our group to reach our Mt. Fuji 8th station “hotel”/hut, arriving around 3:30 p.m. (Hooray! We beat the young ones!) The first day’s 4600 ft. vertical climb to this 11,049 ft high hut was tough at times but exhilarating. The last of our group appeared 2 hours later. Dinner/prison grub (if you could call it that) was served at exactly 5:20 p.m. One wonders why they can’t make somewhat edible food even if we are high atop a mountain??? Most of our group retired shortly after dinner (really?) to be ready for the 2:00 a.m. wake-up call from our Mt. Fuji Guides. Since we were the first to arrive at the 8th station, we had been able to select our bunk/hotel “accommodations” (1st or 2nd level). The beds for both levels ran both sides of a long room with sleeping bags and rock-hard pillows literally side-by-side. The bunk room accommodated about 50+ climbers. Of course, we selected the bottom bunks. Lesley decided to shove David into the corner sleeping bag just in case his snoring became violent due to his sheer exhaustion. We retired to bed around 7:30 p.m. and in 15 nano seconds, David was asleep, snoring away. On Lesley’s left side was a young Indian women who also started to snore and snuggle in her sleepy state against Lesley. Needless to say, Lesley, who needs her solid 8 hours, felt that she barely got a wink of sleep.
There was lots of noise inside and out all night long; as many people trek through the night and stop at the 8th station (which is the last station before the Summit) to refresh before the final and very slow 1300 vertical feet climb due to altitude acclamation. It seemed like forever for the sleepless; but, the 2:00 a.m. wake-up call finally arrived and we jumped out of bed, layered up for freezing temperatures at the summit and marched like little soldiers out the door with our 20 lb. backpacks over our shoulders. It was pitch dark but we had headlamps on our heads to help us avoid the boulders and loose gravel along the way. The 8th station is a junction for all the trails. As soon as we stepped onto the trail, there was a long slow line of climbers with headlamps trekking up the mountain. From hardly seeing a sole on the mountain the previous day, and then seeing hoards of people at 2:30 in the morning was a shock for us. After about 20 minutes, our guides led us to a “private”, yet unopened, path exclusive to our group.
We are very proud to say that we were also the first two (and the elders of the group) to reach the Summit. Perhaps, it was the altitude because all the “youngins” in the group were quite fit. Experiencing sunrise on the peak was amazing because not only was it quite spectacular; but, we were also experiencing good weather conditions. We were informed that clear, non-rainy weather conditions is a rarity. Although it was cloudy below, we were very grateful to experience the Mt. Fuji sunrise.
After our delicious cup of noodles soup breakfast at 5:00 a.m. in the very crowded summit hut, we started making our descent on a different trail than our ascent. About 30 minutes into our descent, our guide informed us that we were about to experience the most difficult part of the Mt. Fuji experience, “the beach”, as he called it. And, indeed it was. . . ! Think steep, mini sand dunes with rocks underneath, boulders on top and loose, “slippery” gravel everywhere. After several difficult kilometers of this nasty knee-killer experience, we both fell apart. David took two nasty falls; and, Lesley was struggling to remain upright. Even though we were vigorously using our walking sticks, both of us had such knee pain (in different knees), most of our group flew by us. How could this be? We felt like super (“old”) stars yesterday since we beat everyone to the 8th station as well as the summit. This rigorous descent continued on for several hours until we reached lovely large boulder forest gullies we had to climb over. About half the group reached the base camp before we both stumbled in, thighs aching, knees in pain and very sore calves.
Climbing Mr. Fuji was a personal challenge for us that was worth a little suffering. Our thighs, knees and calves were so sore we could hardly get up the morning after our descent. That same morning, we are headed to Narita airport for our 20+ hour return trip home which includes air and L.A. transfer times. Climbing Mt. Fuji was a fantastic last hoorah for us. The End to an incredible trip to celebrate 40 great years together.
