Fuji-San

Hello everyone.

Melissa here!! I thought I would write an entry seeing as how Mike has not ventured to place of interest recently. I however, have just scaled the highest mountain in Japan, Mt Fuji. I'm not sure where to start the story, but I guess it begins back in Canada when Mike and I were first planning our trip. You see, we had to give the Japanese embassy an outline of what we would be doing if allowed entry into Japan. While Mike and I wrote separate itineraries, I thought climbing Mt. Fuji was on both of our lists of "things to do." Sadly, I was wrong and I didn't find this out until there were only a few weeks left in the official climbing season. It made me really sad that Mike didn't want to come with me. I mean, it's not like we climb mountains all the time, this was the one chance I had. How was I supposed to travel several hours and then climb a mountain by myself? I had this vision of us traveling to Tokyo, seeing the sights, then hiking up Fuji to see the sunrise together. Doesn't that sound romantic? Mike had left me with feelings of anger and sadness, yet, I somehow managed to find some motivation. Whether it was spite or a need to fulfill some bizarre quest, I found an English speaking group traveling to Mt Fuji one week later

Bags packed and up early on Saturday August 18th I headed out to meet the group and hopefully some new friends to climb with. There was assigned seats on the bus and when the women, Heather, arrived who was to sit next to me, she was anything but friendly. I think the first thing she said to me was "Could they make these seats any smaller?" and "I can't believe we have assigned seats, couldn't we just pick our own" Doesn't that sounds like someone you want to spend the next 7 hours next to? I was glad to just close my eyes and sleep. When we neared Mt. Fuji, our guide gave us some last minute instructions, including "make sure you climb in at least groups of two". Heather then turned to me and said "you'll be my climbing buddy right?" What was I supposed to say? In her defense, she did get a little nicer as the bus trip went on. When we arrived the group split up to get last minute things from the store. I had lost my "climbing buddy" already. This is when I met Noah and Jordan. As our guide got us all together again and led us to the climbing route, Heather had found me and the four of us begin our trek upwards at approximately 9pm.

No sooner had I taken out the camera to take a picture of the first climbing sign, did it start to rain. Not a light drizzle either, full-on downpour. The droplets were huge. We all started to joke that climbing a mountain clearly wasn't hard enough on its own, there had to be more challenges. Heather soon fell behind with some other slower people from the group and Jordan was much faster, so it was just Noah and I for the rest of the 12 hour adventure.

At every station Noah and I would stop to take a picture, marking our ascension up the mountain. It wasn't easy as the ground is made up of little lave rocks that slip from under your feet and there are big boulders that you have to climb up. Sometimes there were rough stairs made and it was great gift to see them. Arriving at a station hut would give us some motivation. Seeing the upcoming lights made it seem like the top was near. However, the top was a long hike up. The tradition souvenir from Mt. Fuji is a hiking stick. At all the stations you can have a mark burned into the wood (see picture) to show how far you made it. Noah and I did not get a stick as we didn't know what we we do with them later. However, it would have been nice to have one on the way down (more about that later).

One of the good things about climbing at night was seeing all the stars. As there are no city lights to hide their brightness, everything in the sky seems magnified. I have never seen stars like this. The big dipper was so low in the sky it was as if it was right next to the mountain. Orion's belt was unbelievably clear and if I knew any other constellations, I would have been able to see them for sure. There were even shooting stars. It was amazing. The other cool thing about climbing at night was my flashlight! Notice in the pictures, its a head lamp. I fit right in with the Japanese climbers. There were tons of little Japanese people in super snazzy climbing suits and boots. Some sections of the mountain we had to following in line behind mass amounts of people. It was nice to be able to climb at a slow pace as we were getting tired.

Climbing at night had it's downfalls too. 1: it was hard to see anything but right in front of you and 2: It was cold......really cold. I'm sure the fact that we had climbed up 3000m had something to do with the temperature as well. We stopped near the Fujisan Hotel to have to have some soup and warm up in one of the huts. It was great to rest and be warm for 20 minutes but it seemed much colder when we started up the mountain again. By 4am I was really tired. I think at some points I was climbing with my eyes closed, lucky we were near the top. We stop on a ledge to have a clear view of the sunrise with one body sitting in front of us. I thought the sun would come up from behind the horizon but it appeared through the clouds. People even cheered at the first sight of the sun. I was just glad for the temperature to start rising. Seeing the sun rise was really special and so unique. A small part of me is glad that this was a solo mission because the experience belonged to me. And while there were thousands of other people on the mountain, they didn't really matter, the climb and the sunrise were mine.

After making it to the top it was all I could think of to just get down. It was fun at first, kinda of running down the mountain side. You had to slide as the lava rocks move and roll beneath your feet. But the novelty soon wore off and I'm not sure which was harder, climbing up the mountain or going down. A stick would have help as I lost my balance and would fall more often then i would have liked. This one time my bum really felt the pain of jagged rocks beneath it. I had a good bruise to prove it. Even though we were climbing down the mountain the view was constantly amazing, even at the 5 station were the buses drop people off the view of the surround mountain range is unbelievable.

The climb took us about 12 hours up and down. We did stop along the way so I think it took about 6 hours to climb to the top and about 4 to come down. There is a saying in Japan that says, "You are a fool not to climb Mt. Fuji once, but you are a fool to climb it twice". I agree! I think once was definitely enough. But it was an amazing trip that i will never forget.