I Climbed Mt.Fuji!

Mt.Fuji Gallery

These are pictures when I climbed Mt.Fuji last year
with my husband (American) and my parents.

We lived near Tokyo,
so we took a Shinkansen (a bullet train / an express) 'Kodama'
from shinagawa and got off at shin-fuji station.
My parents were coming by their car from the opposite direction,
Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima side,
we met at the station and took the same car to get to Mt.Fuji.
If you have a car you can also get there by a car, without taking trains.

We took Fujinomiya root.
You can climb by a car and get to the parking lot near the fifth station.
It is the final spot that you can use your car.
Everyone must get off the car there.
There you can change your clothes and be ready,
bring only what you really need.

You take bus or taxi and get to the 5th station.
It takes about 20 min.
It is very hot there! You will feel good!
It is already 2,400m ( 7,500 feet ) above sea level.
We suddenly came this higher ground by a car, I did not realize at first,
but you are already getting high-altitude headache
since you climbed by a car so quickly...

You used to see some trees earlier from the car, but here no more trees here.
In stead, there are some weeds and floweres.

We can see grooves of bulldozers.
I heard that they are carrying water or food to mountain huts.
I do not think they can go to the top of Mt Fuji, though...

Slope is still easy and okay. We can see pretty floweres there:)
I also can see bulldozers' grooves there.
Lots of people are climbing in a line.
They look fine and are having fun!

It's getting steep slope.
It was close from the 5th station to 6th station,
we can not see the 7th station yet, though we've walked and walked.
Repeating "How much longer?","How much longer?", I started having a headacke,
which was obviously high-altitude disease.

We walk in the clouds,
it is very foggy, sometimes we could not see even 1meter ( 3 feet ) ahead.
It is dangerous that you can not see around you. Watch out!

Oh boy!
Finelly, it started terrible raining with thunder, lightning!!

We wore our rain coats in a hurry.
We did not want to get wet all over to be frozen.
It was quite chilly. We could not imagine that at the 5th station earlier.

We can see the mountain hut where we are supposed to stay tonight far away from us.
It looks like almost near the top of the mountain.

It looks so high and small, it will take at least 3 more hours... (sigh...)
Everyone got tired and kind of in a bad mood... We need REST!!!

Someone even started saying "Let's go home.".
Actually, it was the hardest part of the climbing.

Sudden of rain fall, thunder, lightning, headache, etc...
We were not get used to none of them in daily life!

Someone also said,
"We might not be able to see anything even if we made it to the top..."
What a hopeless conversation! Yes, I agree!

However, we alerady came this far!
so we shoud get to our mountain hut and check in anyway.
because we need to rest no matter what.
And then tomorrow morning, we will figure out what to do.

It's gonna be all depend on the weather and our health condition...
Hopefully our headaches should be gone away.

Looking back then, all above I wrote sounds so funny
because it is natural for us to get through those all natural disasters.
I assume that every single person will have to experience these phenomenon,
since we walk through the rainy clouds or thunder clouds to achieve the top the mountain.
Passing clouds walking through them is seriously inevitable...
Therefore, we need raincoats.

30min had passed, then suddenly rainy clouds were all gone!
It was surprising.
We all said, "What's going on?"
The clouds passed so quickly.

Then we turned around and found that we already climbed this much!!

Wow!!! This is amazing!!!

People who want to eat something or take a nap drop by at a mountain hut.
There is no shower, though.

If you can make a reservation in advance, it is good,
but you can offer to stay there the day without reservation, too.
(However, top of Mt. Fuji seems like you always need reservation.)

We stayed at the ganso(=original) 7th station.
Lately they built the new 7th station a bit lower place
because it was a real long distance between 6th and 7th stations.

We ate curry and rice for dinner.
We have to sleep with other people
whom you've never seen before in the same room.
Strangers will sleep the very next to you,
there is no wall in between, eighter.

It was really tight and uncomfortable.
You cannot turn over and
sometimes you even have to feel
other peoples' arms or legs coming on your body.

However, this is the part that you need to be patient.
Mountain hut is not a fancy hotel, but just a little place where people can rest temporarily under the roof avoiding rain or wind or coldness.
Tiredness will lead you to a deep sleep, anyway.

While we were having rest,
other people were still climbing in the darkness steadily.
It was impressive.

They all put the head light on.
They might be resting at 8th or 9th station.

Those lights become a long line of illumination along to the mountain slope,
it was really fantastic!!

Also I felt safe.
In this place, such a high place in the mountain,
lots of people are challenging Mt.Fuji.

It was really nice. Look how tough those people are!
They don't give up even in this midnight at all!
Compared to our whining at early evening time...
Oh what a shame! We must stop that.

It is 4 o'clock in the morning.
It is time to see early sunrising.
We went out and tried to see it.

We were still very sleepy, half dreaming,
but it's getting lighter and lighter quickly outside.
When we woke up,
the mountain hut owners gave us Japanese style lunch box,
but almost all was rice.
You can also buy a piece of cream bread and milk, coffee.

Wow!! Finally the sun showed up!!
Suddenly strong sunlight shined on everywhere and it got so light!!
It was too bright for my sleepy eyes.

The air is so refreshing!!!

Still the sun is rising rapidly.
People were taking pictures of this memorial sun rising.
Everyone was so happy about the weather today. Sunny!

Sun is so beautiful!! Fabulous!!!
First I did not wake up but was insisting I needed more sleep,
but it was right decition to wake up.
If I missed this beautiful sun rising, I would have regreted...

Seriously, watching the sun rising deserves to be worth as making to the top!!
Sun rising is one of the biggest events on climing Mt. Fuji.

It's such a beautiful sunny day today.
Or I'd should rather say, we've simply just come above the clouds.

It is tricky but that is why there is no rain or thunder anymore, indeed.

There are 2 colors in the sky.
We also can see this line separating the sky from airplains.

We finally came to such a high up in the air!!
Oh, my parents are waving to us down there!
How small they are!!
No, probably the rock is just too big...

All rocks are so big here!!
Why?? How did they become so big like that?!

Look!!
Look at the big cloud, the big two-color sky, the wild landscape,
and the person standing there!
This is actually one of my most favorite pictures.

Sometimes a huge cloud passes through us with very cold wind.
Those clouds run up the mountainside to the top of Mt. Fuji.
When those clouds pass, we can not see anything
because of the fog.
We just feel cold moisture. and then, once the clouds gone,
suddenly we can see things again.
It is really weird...

See, you can see little clouds down there,
also you can manage to see tiny little towns, too!! cool!

The more you get to higher, red/orange rocks are getting darker,
like almost black.
There is no more flowers or plants.
It's really wild and lonelysome.

Though we feel that we will reach the top very soon,
we can not get there so easily in a short time,
because we have to walk sideways like a snake.
I wish if we could go up straight...
There are many rocks, too.
Walking is getting do difficult and hard.
Be careful not to slip and fall down.
Now you really need a stick to climb.
You can get a wooden, thick, long, heavy stick in a mountain hut,
but I suggest you to bring a stick for hiking or climbing,
it will be much better to use.

The wooden stick they sell at mountain hut is difficult to use but fun.
Because they will brand it memorial hot iron at each station,
which is really enjoyable and will be a great suvenior for you.

Here is a board written "We made it! Mt.Fuji is the best mountain in Japan!".
This is the entrance of the top of Mt.Fuji.
However, we are not at the top yet, actually.

I suppose it must have been so hard to build the gurd frame,
Torii Gate, or the blue board back then.
I wonder how they carried those big, heavy stuff up here...

Finally we are standing at the top of Mt.Fuji!!
Here is a shrine, a post office, a store for suveniors,
a small diner, and a bathroom.


The diner has only 700 yen instant noodles,
500 yen instant coffee, 500 yen instant soup, that's it!
They have only light instant food and hot water in pods.
But it is so expensive here!!

In a mountain hut, still noodles were like 500 yen,
a bottle of spring water or a cup of coffee was like 300 yen for each...
I guess we mostly pay for the labour
to carry these foods or beverages to the top of Mt.Fuji.

Now let's go see the volcanic crater!!

You can see the weather station on the hill at the left side.
It seems to be built the highest place on the top.
I wonder how the government built that...
It must have been tremendous of labour and time!

Just 10 min has passed.
We are at the same place
but it's got so foggy and we can not see the weather station any more.

The weather in the mountain changes in every minite.
the dark blue dots on the left side are humans.
They look very small but 3 people are walking there.

The top of Mt.Fuji was much bigger than I thought.

The picture above is just a small part of the volcanic crater.
I put that picture to show you how small humans look like.

This is the entire crater.
It is so big and deep.
If I fell, it would be really hard to come back.

It was interesting that whole crater was covered with cray.
I stupidly believed that I can see some magma if I look into the cray.

It is said that walking along the cray brings you fortune.
People who are standing across the cray are too small to be seen!

I really wanted to walk around the cray,
but unfortunatelly, I had to work the next day in Tokyo,
so I gave it up and started to go down the trail.

****************************************************************************
Now, How was Mt. Fuji Gallery?

Unexpectedlly,
there were lots of red/orange or black rocks, and the top of the mountain was really wild.

I don't know why there are no flowers or plants there.
May be it is bacause winter season is long and it's too cold,
or too high above sea level, or volcanic soil is not good for greens...
Anyway, it was really surprising.

Climing Mt. Fuji just made me realized that Mt. Fuji was really a volcano.
If there were no one else,
the climbing Mt. Fuji would be really lonely and scary.

I appreciate you all of Mt. Fuji climbers and employees in the mountain huts.

People were all so nice and kind to us and that cheered us.

I wonder how many people are challenging Mt.Fuji this summer again...

Mt. Fuji became my favorite mountaion.
I actually even would like to try climbing Mt.Fuji every summer!
I am so fascinated...

Everybody, enjoy your climbing Mt.Fuji!!

Have a safe trip!

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