This weekend, I climbed Mt. Fuji. In retrospect, I think it may have been one of the most difficult things I've ever done. I count Outward Bound up there, too.
My friend Colleen and I took the shinkansen to Tokyo on Saturday afternoon. We met our friends, Martin and Chigusa, at Shinjuku station, where we had onigiri for dinner. We then caught a bus, which after 2 1/2 hours deposited us at the 5th station on Fuji (about 2000m, I think?).
At 11pm we started hiking, along with hundreds, possibly thousands of other people. One person in our group, one of Chigusa's friends from college, got altitude sickness straightaway, so we stopped often. At around 3am, Chigusa, Colleen, and Chigusa's friend all were quite sick, so Martin decided to take them down, while Chigusa's friend Alex and I continued to the top.
We didn't get to see the sunrise from the top, but we did get a nice view of it from about 3000m up. After that, the weather became pretty bad, with ridiculously strong winds, and not really rain but a thick mist that coated everything with water. There were also so many people on the narrow trails, many of which were just outcroppings of rock, that going was very slow. What should have taken us 3 hours turned into 5. We took a break for miso soup at 3400m, and summitted (sp?) at 8am. There's a shrine at the summit, and a big Torii. I was too tired to take many pictures at the top (sorry!), but I did eat some lovely miso soup.
Going down the mountain was like walking on the moon. The ground was soft, volcanic ash and we were swathed in thick clouds, so that we kind of bounded down the hill. Of course, after about 2 hours going downhill started to really hurt, and we had 2 more hours of it. I did meet some friends from Joetsu on the way, and we hiked to the bottom with them. At 12:30pm, 13 1/2 hours after starting, we were back at station 5. I ate some soba, got on the bus with Colleen (which took 3 1/2 hours this time), caught the shink home, and finally walked in my door at 10:30pm.
