I'm finally going to finish my post about climbing Mount Fuji! It's kind of turned into a really really long post. Hopefully this makes up for the lack of posts in July.
So, as an edit to the last post I made about the three different groups, actually, even people who were in the second group, due to the enormous crowd of people climbing Fuji, were not actually at the top at sunrise. They were close, but they still had a bit to hike to reach the actual summit.
Really then, I had no chance of making it to the top and back down again without missing the bus and also probably missing the group at the onsen. I probably would have had to take a bus to the train and then shink back to Okayama. That would have cost an exorbitant amount of money, especially if I had to taxi instead of bus back, and I currently do not have those kinds of funds.
I'm a little disappointed that we went all that way and didn't reach the top. In retrospect, I should have realised that this hike was slightly out of my range, and that I would have had a much better time (and would have reached the top) had I done it in two stretches: hike up to the 7th or 8th stations, rest for a while in the huts, and then make my way leisurely to the top, sunrise be damned. Really, you can see a fantastic sunrise from the 8th station. Fuji is definitely not a mountain that you should rush, so it's far better to overestimate the amount of time you think you're going to take. Like I said before, we did an overnight climb, leaving the 5th station on the Yoshida trail between 9 and 9:30. Sunrise was at 4:20ish. Websites quote that it takes between 5 and 8 hours to do the climb to the top. It took the moderate group about 8 hours to reach the top. The top part, just before the summit is actually quite crowded so places that shouldn't take a long time, do. I think one of the groups said it should have taken them 30 minutes, but took them an hour instead. Many people, as we were talking after the climb, had extreme amounts of rage at the tour groups that had done the climb (there were a lot of them). Thankfully, I didn't have this rage. I'm still proud that I got as far as I did, but dunno, sometimes it's kind of embarrassing to admit that no, I did not make it to the top.
Anyways.
The Fuji trip started off way before we got to the actual mountain. I caught a train in from Takahashi to Okayama, taking the second train that got me in 5 minutes before the meet up time rather than the earlier train that got me in a full hour before the meet up time. Figured it wasn't worth trying to rush out of my house and forget something important.
I met up in Okayama Station with all the other crazies who had decided to climb Fuji, where we'd all catch the bus together. We were waiting at the West Exit, where the buses usually come and happened upon this gem of a bus:
Yeah Space Dolphins. :D
It turns out though, that through miscommunication (or just bad information or something) we actually weren't supposed to be at the west exit, so we all moved over to the east exit bus stops, and then eventually to granvia grandvia? - the fancy hotel where the bus driver walked over to escort us to the bus. Yeaaah. The first of several hiccups on our trip. But no matter. We all boarded the bus, and off we went!
A bunch of people brought movies, though half of them weren't region 2 so we unfortunately missed out on some Men in Tights and Mulan. We did watch Hot Fuzz and Amadaeus, though some people were trying to sleep during this leg of the trip since, you know, we'd be hiking all through the time when normal people sleep.
I think I managed to doze off several times throughout the trip, but not for very long each time. Our bus also stopped every 2 hours at a rest stop - and damn, I gotta say, Japanese rest stops are absolutely amazing. They're even more amazing when compared to california rest stops. In California, our bathrooms are kinda gross and dirty, and there's usually only bathrooms and maybe gas at the place, or a convenience store attached to the gas station. Sometimes there's fast food. But the Japanese ones, oh man. Ohhhh man.
One of the places we stopped had a map of the toilets that had lights to tell you if they were occupied or not. There were bathroom grandma's staffing the bathroom making sure it was spic and span; I'm pretty sure they thought I was some crazy Chinese person, especially since I took pictures in the bathroom, and came back again LATER to take more pictures. That whole place though, is CRAZY. Sadly, I had no idea where this actually was.
Eventually though, about 9 hours (that's pretty much the average time it takes to drive from San Diego to San Francisco, albeit with far fewer rest stops) and lots of snacks later, we arrived at the 5th station of Fuji, right at the Yoshida trail and the Kawa-soemthing 5th station. It's the one where most people go; there's tons of omiyage shops and shops that sell those wooden sticks and other things to climb the mountain with. It was dark when we arrived around 8:30ish, and it was COLD. Or well, not cold, but quite chilly! A nice change from the blazing heat that we had traveled through during the day, but when we looked out and saw people in their jackets and everything, it took us by surprise.
After arriving, we unloaded the bus and everyone went to go change and put on the necessary layers (we were still in our "damn it's hot" clothes). I put in my contacts, as well as my light longsleeve heattech shirt from Uniqlo - usually I wear this long sleeve, thermal-like layer under my clothes in the winter. I figured that it was better to start off with the bottom layers first, and then add as we go on. My bottoms, I was just wearing the lightweight pants that I had been wearing on the bus ride over. My legs don't normally get cold easily, so I figured that I could put on the tights that I had later when it actually started to get cold. In retrospect... I'm not sure. While it would have gotten quite warm with them on, I'm sure I would have lived. Changing anything below the waist involved a lot of work; when I actually did put my thermals on, it was really really really really tiring. I had to unlace my boots and pull them off, careful not to step on the gross bathroom floor (though, for public toilets, most were fairly clean). It also took a lot of time to do. So I'm not sure.
Anyways, we all gathered as a large group after we had all finished changing and our group leaders told us about the trail and stuff and about how long it would take, and what to expect going up and coming down, and about altitude sickness (actually called acute mountain sickness though, AMS). We double checked our climbing buddies. Adjusted our headlamps. My headlamp was TINY. Not so good an idea, actually. It was cute, yes, and it made it look like I had a giant power button (and was waterproof, which I wasn't sure if the other was) as well as not super expensive. Yeah, I kind of wish I had picked a different headlamp. One that rotated would have been excellent, because then I wouldn't have to move my head as much in order to figure out what was directly below me. That got annoying.
Everything in check, I decided to start off with my climbing buddy. Our friends were still taking a little bit of time to get ready, and the main group had already gone off. And well, I'm really slow. I know this. So I didn't want to wait around for longer because, I figured, I needed as much of a headstart as I could get if I was going to get up the mountain in time. So off we went.
Initially, from the 5th station, the Yoshida trail is actually really really easy, and really nice. We were walking down it and were like "yeah, if Fuji is like this the whole way, piece of cake." Oh how naive we were. At some point, we actually started walking *down* and I was kind of like, what, why are we going down? This downhill part became an annoying and aggravatingly long uphill walk on the way back.
We hit a more gravelly area, and I got tired of not being able to see stuff as easily with the headlamp on my head, so I pulled it off and attached it to the top of my walking stick instead. It reminded me of Gandalf a little bit, so we had a good laugh fooling around, pretending it was a magic staff, pretending it was He-man's sword, the thundercat sword... Yeah. This was while we still had energy and thought all was well.
Eventually, we hit this part that was lots of rocks going up. We saw this and were like "ah, so Fuji, you start to show your true face" and began our ascent. Shamefully, I was/am far more out of shape than I thought (and I had already assumed I was pretty out of shape) but the altitude hit me really fast and it wasn't before long that I was huffing and puffing for breath as we continued our climb up. I had to rest several times to catch my breath before I could continue. It was kind of embarrassing, and I felt bad for my climbing partner.
Eventually, our group of friends caught up to us; they said they had started off extra fast in order to catch up to us. I felt kind of bad. They would have caught us eventually; this was inevitable at the rate that I was going. But after they caught up, the six of us set out together. This was right before the sixth station, I believe, for we soon hit the really boring zig-zaggy bit after the sixth station where you're basically just walking up loose gravel (like, really lose gravel) and rocks for a looong while. It was here that it became apparent that our group had several different speeds. Alia and Lok were the fastest, followed by Hannah and Gemma (my climbing parterner). In the rear with me was Caroline. Both of us were not having fun going up the hill. Mountain. Have I mentioned how much I hate going uphill?
Eventually, it got to the point where the two fast ones would hike ahead, wait for us, and then we'd catch up, wait a bit more, and then set off again. If that were me, and I was trying to make it to the top by a certain time, I'd definitely be... annoyed a little. So eventually, we decided to swap climbing buddies - Caroline and I would be partners, while my partner, Gemma, and her partner, Hannah, would be climbing buddies instead. That way we were with people around our same speed. Happily paired, we let them go on ahead while we continued to tackle the route, bend-by-bend. Literally. We'd go from one bend to another, resting a little bit (or a lot if it was a harder path) at the end of each one. I've never felt more out of shape in my life. But the path that we were treading on was this volcanic rock stuff, large pebbles that shifted as you stepped on them, making your foot sink in and slide back a little bit each step. This is my reasoning for why such an uphill climb felt harder than it looked.
But hey, it worked I think. Small goals, we told ourselves. Small goals. Each bend in the road. More frequent, short rests meant that we could catch our breath faster without feeling like we're dying, thus saving time over all. I thought it was pretty effective.
At each station, and each hut, actually, as well, there's a guy who sits next to this giant kettle with the embers of a fire and a big giant brand, which he'll burn into your stick for 200 yen. They're really cool brands, and if you're looking for a souvenier, this one is pretty good. Plus my stick came in fairly handy when I was leaning or pulling myself up rocks or whatever with it. It was a little annoying when it got to the rockclimbing parts (I tried stowing it between me and my backpack, like a sword-stick, but I underestimated just how damn long the stick was, and ended up in constant danger of hitting things like the rocks and my climbing buddy), but otherwise it was perfect. I didn't spend too much money on hiking poles (though they would have been useful going down I think) and it also gave me something to stamp at each hut that we made it to. It kind of felt like I was unlocking achievements with each hut I got to, and then was thusly rewarded with a stamp that got branded into my wooden walking stick.
Most of the guys manning the branding bits were young dudes (won't complain about that) and generally, when you walk up to the station, walking stick in hand, they can tell that there's a chance you'll want a brand. Especially if you already have lots. So a lot of them actually came up and were like "braaaaand?" and I was like "YESPLS *pant pant*" in the least attractive way possible lol. Not that it mattered. But as the night wore on, a couple of the huts actually weren't giving out stamps because the brander was sleeping. One of the dudes though, let me in to the nice warm branding hut and entertained a couple of questions while we waited for the fire to warm up that I managed to piece together in Japanese and a little English. We had a fun conversation about how the kettles used to heat water in the old days, but now they just used the electric pottos and didn't really use the giant kettles so much. It was a nice break from walking.
Also, at these huts where they sold the brands, they usually also sold food and beverages, so in case you ran out of or stupidly forgot water or sports drink, you could buy it there... for a price. That price being an arm and a leg. Water, if I remember correctly, was around 400 yen. Food was more expensive. I think a cup ramen was going for 600 yen or something. EXPENSIVE. And it only got *more* expensive as you got closer to the summit. Since I didn't make it all the way up, I dunno how much it cost up there but I heard it's a pretty yenny.
On a related note, water is HEAVY. I never noticed this as much before. I took 2 L of water in those GIANT 2L bottles, as well as a 500 mL bottle of pocari sweat. I'm actually really really glad I took the pocari sweat along, because drinking from the 2L bottles is a giant pain in the rear. Like seriously. When you have to stop, unzip your backpack, haul out the 2L bottle, then repack your 2L into your backpack with all your layers of clothing, it gets tiring really fast. Wasted energy. So instead, I poured some of the 2L into the smaller bottle and stopped every so often to fill that up when I ran out. I drink water like a fish though, so the 2.5L of liquid lasted me about until we started our descent, and then I ran out. Luckily, my climbing partner had barely touched her water (which might explain why she got such a bad case of AMS) so I "liberated" some of the weight she was carrying as we went back down.
I digress though. After we made it to the 7th station up the zig-zaggy loose large chunky gravel path, we got to the dreaded region between the 7th and the 8th station. The view from here was absolutely phenomenal though. Looking up, you could see the huts that lined the path between the 7th and 8th, giving you some kind of tangible goal to work towards, and the line of lights as people (headlamps and flashlights attached) made their way upwards. We wondered, many times, which group of lights were our friends, and wondered if they wondered how far behind we were (actually less than we had thought, kind of). The sky, too, from that area was absolutely gorgeous. Anyone who climbs the whole way without stopping for a little bit to look at the night view is truly missing out. The sky was clear; you could see hundreds of stars dotting the sky, and the faint wispy path that we assumed was the milky way. Below us were the city lights, though there were far fewer those than there were natural lights above. Honestly, had it not been for the stars, climbing at night would have utterly sucked.
Why? One, I bought the wrong kind of headlamp. A rotating headlamp, so that you can point it at the ground while you look on ahead at the steep cliff of a chunk of rock you're supposed to climb up. So that you don't have to move your entire head to aim your light at what you want to look at. I found out later the headlamp I wanted to buy but didn't because it didn't say it was waterproof actually was. Sigh. But yeah, hiking - and rock climbing to a small extent, though my rock climbing friends would probably laugh in my face if they saw what we were calling "rock climbing" - in the dark was just kind of annoying because you had to go slower since you couldn't see half of the things and had to actually look around for good handholds and footholds (there were plenty though, and as long as you had good hiking shoes, it was actually not too bad). It just got kind of tiring. I imagine, if I were the kind of person who just scrambled up rocks without being so concerned and worried about where I was putting what foot and falling off the mountain - some people would call this overly cautious - it would have been much easier and less tiring. But I'm not. Oh well.
This was the part where I abandoned my stick and relied instead on my hands. This is where having gloves and thick pants come in handy, because the rocks are rather... sharp sometimes. One girl actually ripped her pants in this area, so an underlayer isn't a bad idea either.
Have I mentioned how much I hate rocks right now?
A number of people passed us on the way up to the 8th station, and the cool thing about hiking Fuji is that everyone hiking it tends to be pretty friendly (at least, below the 8th station). We actually struck up a conversation with some of our fellow hikers as we rested and gawked at the rocks we had to climb. There was a man who was over here for business and had just decided to climb Fuji. There were some people our age from the Bay Area (small world!). Lots of Japanese. But everyone had this kind of fighting spirit and sense of camaraderie, kind of, that we were all going through this together.
As we going up from the final hut at the 7th to the first 8th station, we actually passed a guy from HiroshimaAJET who was heading down. He didn't look so great. He said that his climbing buddy was actually at a hut at one of the 7th stations, and that he had gotten a bad headache and felt a little nauseous so he was also heading back down the Rocks of Doom. I offered him some of my oxygen, since he had none, and he said after it helped a little, and then continued his descent downwards.
You could not pay me to climb down those rocks in the dark, especially after we spent all that energy climbing up.
This is about when my climbing partner's headache started to get worse. But, like I said, neither of us wanted to climb back down, and we wanted to make it to where we could take the supposedly easier path back down (little did we know!) so we started resting more often, but continued our climb up.
After what seemed like forever, we made it to the 8th station, and pretty much collapsed on the floor, out of breath and really really really tired. We actually ran into one of the other girls from Okayama pretty much right after that. She had also split from her hiking buddy, and was feeling really nauseous so was similarly heading back down. My partner wasn't feeling so hot. I decided to use the bathroom and put on my underlayer of pants while my partner rested and hopefully started to feel better.
Changing was a battle in itself. Hiking boots are a pain to take off, and there was noooo way I was letting my clothes touch the floor.
When I finally finished (out of breath), my hiking partner informed me that yeaaaah she really wasn't feeling good. At all. Like was not able to go on. So we stopped to assess our... options. We could continue going really really slow and try to get as high as we could by sunset (which was around 30-40 minutes away at that point). This would get us closer to the summit. We thought we would have to make it up there in order to get the easy path down... and at one point, we weren't sure if we would make it back down in time. Caroline suggested we email our leader and let him know that we won't be meeting them and that we would take a taxi or bus back to a shinkansen station and then shink our way back home. I told her that I was not going to miss our bus back, since I could not afford that (taxis are ridiculously expensive and Fuji is not super close to a shink station) and I didn't want her paying for me. I was in favor of the climb-to-keep-warm-and-get-as-high-as-we-can plan. We took one look at the path to the next station and my partner was like yeaaaaaaaah... no.
The other option was to stay at the huts, which, I found out after asking, was going to cost us 3500 yen, and we could stay until 5 am. Expensive. But she was in favor of this plan, since she didn't really want to split up. Don't blame her either. I feel like a bad friend since I was considering it. Since I didn't want to stay in the place, but she did, I figured that she could stay, I'd hike up to the next station, and I'd meet her on the way back down.
We had actually found out from the hut-dude (who spoke pretty good English) that once the sun came up, the short-cut paths that linked all of the huts on Fuji to the "easy" downhill path would be open. So we wouldn't have to go back down the rocks again (thank god). So I figured this plan of mine - meet her on the downhill path - would work out just fine.
Except, when she went in to pay to stay at the hut, she paid for me too. At this point, it was like... 4 am, and predawn was already giving us a fantastic array of colors in the morning sky. (Someone made the comment that now, they understood where those stupid rainbow gradients come from). We had like, 15 minutes til sunrise. And she had already paid and said not to worry about the money. I felt so bad since I was totally ready to just wait until sunrise!
So I got 10 minutes of sleep before I woke up to see the sunrise. And wow. Sunrise was GLORIOUS. One of the most beautiful I've seen in my life. Above the clouds, clear sky, gorgeous colors... it made me question if I truly loved sunsets best.
Really, I think what's so amazing is that we were above all of that. Far above that.
After we had our breath stolen by the sunrise and the lack of oxygen, we decided that it was better to head down sooner or later so we weren't left at Mount Fuji stranded without a bus. Cause who knew how long it would take to get back down.
Our climb down looked something like this, times 50, and less gorgeous the more times you zigged-zagged down it. It wasn't like it was a particularly hard descent; it was just monotonous, boring, hard on the knees and feet, and full of small-to-medium sized mars rock colored volcanic rock where your foot sank a bit every time it stepped. It made slipping really really really easy. If it weren't for the bends in the road that would have you tumbling down the mountain should you overshoot, I would have considered running most of the way down (cause let's be realistic, I wouldn't have been able to run the whole way down). Taking larger steps and going faster (and generally, not caring whether or not I slipped) made it much easier and less painful to go down.
The whole way would have been much more beautiful and much less annoying had it not been for the - I kid you not - swarms of small flies and wasps that were populating the area. I was already surprised by the vegetation that started about halfway between the 7th and 8th stations, but this? This surprised me much more. I had not expected bugs, let alone this many, to be up close to the summit! I mean, seriously, the area is mostly rock. What do these dudes eat? (Tourists, obviously). It's part of what motivated us to get down the mountain so fast. No joke. We would be resting at one of the bends and a wasp would come land on one of us... and I figured out early on that swatting at a wasp was totally not a good idea. So instead, I ran. Generally the wasp came off as I ran (silently screaming) down the hill to the next bend in the road, where the process would repeat itself.
The downwards path has exactly one toilet in between the summit and the 6th station, and they're biotoilets, which is code word for the water looks disgusting but is actually probably good for the environment.
Even after the zig-zag path ends, it's still quite a ways away from the 5th station. We continued to walk downward, realizing just how freaking far we had come. We went down at a pretty steady pace, and it still took us something like 3 to 3.5 hours to get back down all the way. There were a bunch of really cute small children who kept passing us and saying "OHAYO GOZAIMASU~" to which we were obligated to say "ohayo gozaimasu" back in a far far less genki and half dead voice. Not my first choice for what my precious oxygen and energy was going to.
So we were nearly there, at the bottom of the 6th station, when we came to this bend in the road. Both ways said Yoshida trail, and we had been warned earlier about making sure to stay on the Yoshida, since way way way further up the Yoshida trail splits into a completely different train that takes you to the opposite side of the mountain. This was not that split. This split was whether we wanted to go to the base of the Yoshida, or back to where the buses came. And clearly, we wanted to where the buses came, but my climbing partner wasn't completely convinced, so out came the direction paper we received on the bus... that was no help. We also couldn't find the name of the bus station on the map, though we did see the buses. Either way, the trails eventually connected. But the one that we weren't supposed to take was 10 extra minutes long. And I did not want to hike for 10 more minutes on top of everything (I was tired at this point, alright? Or well, I'd been tired most of the hike). We settled for asking one of the Japanese lady tourists we saw near the map, and she pointed down the path that a) we had come and b) that led to the buses.
Yeah... I'm still a little smug about that. That my directional senses weren't completely off. Cause I mean, I'm used to getting quite lost ahaha.
It was at this point that that early nice downhill part on our hike up started to become agonizing and annoyingly uphill. We were like whaaaaaaat. Theeeeeee. Heeeeeeeeeell. WORST PLACE TO HAVE AN UPHILL PORTION EVER.
But I mean, we made it, finally, to the end. And met up with the Hiroshima people who had also gone back, and sat on the ground, and were sorely tempted to just flat out lie on the ground. But we didn't. I had meat on a stick (that had been taken off the stick and cut into pieces) for breakfast. I thanked my hiking boots.
Eventually, people started to trickle down and unbeknowst to us, the others were regrouping at the drop off point about 50 feet away. One of the guys came over and was like "oh yeah we're meeting over near the drop off point, and glad to see you down here because nobody had heard from you guys and we didn't see you at the summit." I was tired, and pissy at that point, but I held back my reply of "yeah I know I didn't make it to the summit jerk, thanks for rubbing it in, but I didn't want to be left behind." Instead I imagined him tumbling down the mountain - wee!
Actually, not going all the way to the top turned out to be a prudent and responsible decision. We would have been very very very late, and probably left behind. Our leader wasn't exactly the sympathetic to being left behind type (wonderful guy though, don't get me wrong). As it was, there were two groups that came in behind schedule (but some came back before the bus was supposed to leave). One was my group of friends. We had gone back to the bus by then, and then they came back and we were still missing 3 people at that point. We were supposed to go to an onsen at that point, so people started to look a little annoyed and uhhh... uncomfortable about having to make a decision about whether or not to leave them.
Thankfully, right before we decided to leave, everyone turned up and we all made it to the onsen - hooray! The only thing was, that left us with like, not very long to eat, and not very long to shower and onsen. Like, by the time people were finishing their meals, we had between 20-25 minutes to shower and utilize the onsen.
...my normal showers take about 20 minutes to shower and then dry. The onsen meant we had to change into the robes, walk to the onsen, take off clothes, shower at the stall thingies, go back to the room, dry off, change into rental robes, walk to locker room, and change into normal clothes. At a minimum. 20 minutes was laughable. One girl decided not to shower because with her hair and everything, it would have taken far longer (though I don't know why she couldn't have just washed her body). But like, I mean, girls take forever. And as long as I wasn't amongst the last few... it'd be fiiiiine.
Unfortunately though, the showers were FULL when I got there and I was like OH CRAP. Embarrassment aside. But thankfully, a spot opened up, and I still had enough time to take a fast dip into the lovely hot onsen. And I still wasn't the last one out.
Seriously though, onsen are meant to be leisurely enjoyed. Like, 1.5 hours minimum for eating and onsen-ing. Silly late people.
Guess this means I'll just have to onsen again!
Maybe after the next time I try to tackle Fuji. I wasn't scarred enough from the first time, lol. I want to do it again, and reach the top, so that I can say I reached the top. Because I felt really really stupid as everyone came back and was like "hell yeah I made it to the top of Fuji" and I was like "...yeah I made it to the 8th station". Silly for me to feel this way, I know, since 8th is still an accomplishment, but I dunno, it just... didn't feel completely. I want to go again, but take more time to go up and not worry about rushing or about missing trains or what have you. Maybe go up for the sunset instead.
At least I won't have to buy another walking stick.
