It was a gruelling climb, and there were many moments where I honestly didn't think I would make it, but I did, and I'm super proud of myself. Especially given the ridiculous handicap I had, which I'll explain in a minute.
When I decided that I was going to do this, I did some searching around, reading accounts of people who did it on their own. It seemed really complicated, with the various paths you can take up the mountain, and in many places (especially the mountain huts) it seemed like fluency in Japanese would be required, so instead I did a slightly different search and found the tour package offered by Willer. Definitely a good idea. The package included transportation both ways between Tokyo and Fuji, a mountain guide (which actually turned into two mountain guides), an English-speaking guide (who was also a mountain guide, and our other mountain guides spoke English too, but this one was with us from pick-up to drop-off, not just on the mountain), meals, and a stay in a mountain hut so that our hike was properly timed for sunrise. There were also add-on options to the package for equipment rental (which I did not purchase, and I regretted not purchasing it virtually the whole time) or a post-climb bath (which I also did not purchase, but that actually turned out to be a good thing, more on that later).
So the bus picks up in Tokyo (Shinjuku) at 7:30 in the morning. I have two choices: a) get there the day before and pay for that transportation as well as a hostel for the night, or b) take the night bus, rolling the transportation and overnight shelter requirements into one cheap little package. I went with option b. Thing is, as I've detailed in my past adventures, I don't really sleep on the night bus. Probably even less than I sleep on planes, which isn't really much. So when we pulled into Shinjuku at 5:40AM that day, I was running on about one to one and a half hours of incredibly disjointed and not even remotely restful sleep. Boom, handicap! I have to climb a mountain on this. I regret that decision as well.
Anyway, the bus picks us up (there are 27 of us, not including the guide), and we take our ride from downtown Tokyo to the 5th station (of 10 total, with 10 being the summit) of the Subaru trail. The people who bought the equipment rental package get their equipment, and we all have a ridiculously early lunch (like, before 11).
The climb up the Subaru trail basically looks like this: you start at the fifth station (where all the restaurants and shops are, because buses can actually go that far so many people take trips to Fuji and just spend the day there before going home), then comes the sixth station (the station the mountain safety team works out of), the seventh station (parts one through, I think, four), the real eighth station (with multiple parts as well), the old eighth station (which is where our mountain hut was), the ninth station, and then the summit. Our guide took us at a slow pace, with breaks roughly every half hour to water ourselves and take deep breaths to adjust to the altitude. Our goal was to do about six hours of climbing to reach the mountain hut, at which point we would have dinner and rest, and then get up and moving by 2AM the next day to make the one and a half/two hour-ish climb to the summit for sunrise. The first few hours weren't bad. Definitely hard work, and not something I should have been doing on as little sleep as I had, but I was doing fine. I was definitely worse off when I did the half marathon at Disney two years ago. Mostly the path was an incline of semi-packed dirt, with a few retaining steps around corners as you slolam your way up the mountain. The steps were particularly difficult for me, being as short as I am. Many of them came up to around my knee, so I have to keep lifting my knee to my chest and put a lot of energy into hoisting myself up these things. And the guide gives us advice like, "Push your weight through your heel to keep the strain off your thighs," or, "Take baby steps to use less energy!" And I take another look at these stairs and think, "Baby WHAT?!" But yeah. That was the first couple hours. That was the easy part.
My feet at the sixth station.
After about two or so hours of that, our guide announces that we're coming up on a section of what he calls "steep rock," and we're going to be climbing that for about two hours. He advises those who have been using those walking pole things to put them away, as we may need the use of our hands a bit. Alright, that sounds... vaguely ominous, but sure. Let's go! So "steep rock" turns out to actually mean "irregularly shaped volcanic slag," and it's only JUST climb-able, with odd footholds, and again with the huge steps I have to take that practically shove my kneecap into my neck. It's a tough climb. After a gruelling amount of effort, extra personal breaks for a few seconds at a time, and draining at least one of my bottles of water, we reach the seventh station. Hurray. Only about another hour and a half of this rock nonsense, and then about another hour of dirt hill climbing after that to reach our destination. Because we're only halfway through the day's climb at this point. We take an extra-long break at the beginning of the seventh station before continuing our way up.
Rock. So much steep rock.
This is where we start to lose people, and we learn the purpose of having multiple mountain guides. It's so the rest of us can keep going while one guide takes the ones who can't make it back. Thankfully, they don't have to go all the way back; there's space available along the seventh station mountain huts, so they can stay the night, potentially still see something of the sunrise, and then meet us back at the fifth station after the descent in the morning. Every time we reach a new set of buildings after a tough bit of climbing I think, "Oh man, we must be almost there! It's been forever!" No. It's just another section of the seventh station, we're still a ways away from our stop, and my body is starting to hate me. I've lost my Dutch friend, so barring a couple conversations with the dad from New York (we lost his son as well) at the rest stops I've got no one to actually talk to on this climb anymore which means I have no distraction. All I have is this climb. Other people are starting to feel the altitude a bit, and I'm not sure if it's the altitude or just my lack of sleep finally catching up to me (my money is mostly on the latter), but my balance is starting to feel really off. Not bad enough that I can't climb, but I definitely need to climb slower than everyone else. So I'm at the back of the pack with the last guide. It's embarassing, I feel incredibly out of shape, and so many times over these two hours I consider throwing in the towel and going back to the seventh station. But there's something inside me that's determined to do this. It's hard, and my limbs are protesting every step I take and every time I rise from a break I want to sit right back down, but something in me refuses to quit until I actually can't climb anymore (or I fall off the mountain). So I kept going.
Everything you see is one station, but it'll take you forever to get through all of it.
It started raining about five minutes before we reached our mountain hut. We'd been lucky enough to have gorgeous weather thus far in our climb, but up near the top of the mountain the weather can get unpredictable. So we were pelted pretty hard, and it started coming down even worse when we got inside. Even though it's close to our target arrival time (we actually made it fifteen minutes early), our supper won't be ready for a while, so we have some time to strip off our wet outer layers (and socks), and just relax and maybe nap a bit. We're in a room to ourselves, and by "ourselves" I mean all 22 of us who made it this far, laid along the main floor and each of the bunk wings of the room six-across like a high school sleepover party gone weird. Eventually we were called down to dinner (curried burger patty and rice), and then went back up to crash, with our instructions to be awake by 1:30 so that we could start our climb at 2:00. A bunch of us set alarms, and we all settled into our futons. The summit climb in the morning was completely optional (obviously), and I wasn't sure how sore I would be in the morning, so I was resigned to the fact that this may be as far as I made it. Especially since, when the alarms started going off at dark o'clock in the morning, I hadn't really slept. Again.
I was surprisingly good for the climb in the morning. I mean, I was incredibly tired, obviously, but just sleep-tired. My body didn't hurt at all. I was equal parts shocked and thankful. So I dressed in all my layers, removed anything extraneous from my bag to leave at the hut (we were coming back for breakfast after the summit), and headed out with my flashlight to join the herd. It wasn't too busy heading up to the top (apparently there can be "traffic jams" sometimes that cause the climb to take more than two hours), and it wasn't any worse than anything we'd faced thus far coming up. It was just a little scarier because of the dark (I had a handheld flashlight instead of the headlamp because I didn't rent the equipment; headlamp would have been loads easier, but I didn't trip and fall and die, so I'm considering it a win anyway), but physical exertion wise it was fun. But let me tell you, the dark makes it a lot more boring, without anything to look at. Add that to not really having anyone to talk to in order to distract me, and I was afraid this climb would actually drive me insane. So I did what I usually do in these kinds of situations and retreated into my mind, only coming out to interact with people on breaks. I can reliably inform you that, excluding the time we took for breaks, it takes almost exactly the length of Disney's Beauty and the Beast to reach the summit from the old eighth station.
The summit was all kinds of cold and wet. Clouds had moved in, the wind was whipping every which way, and we couldn't really see anything. Our guides had to make the call to cancel the walk around the volcanic crater, and our sunrise consisted entirely of the dark just becoming less dark. Disappointing, but I made it to the top.
The descent is where the intense regret at not renting the climbing equipment comes in. There's a separate path for descent (presumably to help the flow of traffic and to reduce accidents), and it's entirely semi-packed/semi-loose dirt and rocks on a steep slant, slaloming down the mountainside.
They recommend having the climbing sticks to take the stress off your knees. Personally, I think they should make them mandatory. I read that, and I was like, "Nah, it won't be that bad. I can do without!" And I mean, I did. Obviously. I didn't have a choice. Going down the mountain was kind of an imperative. But it hurt. A lot. Basically you're walking down a steep, shifting hill for three hours. But after a lot of effort, I made it all the way back to the fifth station to grab some omiyage for my coworkers.
I hadn't really planned on buying anything for myself, but I was feeling pretty nasty after a couple days without a shower or being able to brush my teeth, and wearing the same clothes that were pretty saturated in sweat by this point. Like I said, I hadn't purchased the onsen option when I booked the package, but I was pretty sure I'd just be able to pay separately when we got there, since we were all stopping there anyway. Apparently I'd had enough foresight to pack extra underthings, socks, and yoga pants, but not enough foresight to pack a clean shirt. So I had to buy one. I found one of the largest shirts I could find in green so that it would be super comfy and also long enough to wear with yoga pants and still be publically acceptable since I would be going into Tokyo after this. Win. We all got back fairly early, so the guide was able to have the bus brought around an hour early, which would give us more time at the baths. When we got there, it turned out it was Ladies' Day, so my ticket actually cost ￥100 less than it would if I'd bought the package. More win. After a lovely soak, brushing my teeth twice, and bundling all my dirty things into plastic bags in my backpack, I got back on the bus and we made our way back to Tokyo!
(And a big thanks to Ros who did my mountain laundry while I passed out after I got back. Tired Mel was tired.)
