29/9 Claire – Mount Fuji

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Originally uploaded by blenkers

So… Mount Fuji… Let me tell you about Mount Fuji. Ian can give you his take on this later. I have yet to see the famous view of Fuji that you see in the pictures, it eluded us right up to the point of being stood on it due to fog and mist, and then of course being stood on it means you can’t actually see it.

We took a bus to the 5th Station which is 2400ft and then walked to the low 7th station at 2770ft. It was dry, warmish and had stopped raining. It didn’t take long (just over an hour) and the plan was to stay in a mountain hut that evening and set off for the summit at 1am so that we were there for the sunrise which is amazing colours of purples and reds, a great photo opportunity. Sunrise is just after 4.30 so the 3.5hr hike up would need to start in the middle of the night.

These mountain huts, as you walk up to them, are huge buildings. Not huts in my eyes, not until they take you to your bed anyhow. We paid 6000yen each for a bed and dinner that evening. As you can see from the picture the description “hut” starts to become apparent. This accommodation was like nothing I have EVER stayed in before (or likely to again). They were like boxes with no front to them, only curtains, all about 6ft x 6ft x 6ft… made of wood… and all next to each other, two floors of them. I felt like I was going to be pushed in, the box sealed up and shipped back to the UK.

So after dinner of rice and curry sauce (!) at 6pm there was nothing to do but climb into our box, into the slightly cold, slightly damp duvet and get some sleep. If you can imagine something like a garden fence between you and the next group you can now imagine how much sleep we got when some one in another box started snoring like a pneumatic drill.

1am arrived and all I could hear was torrential rain on the roof. Of course it always sounds worse than it is… no that’s an inaccuracy, the sound could not have prepared me for the amount of water that was falling from the sky. I have never been so covered head to toe in waterproof gore-tex yet never been so cold and wet. I had water squelching through my toes. My waterproof gloves were so wet they poured out water when I clenched my fists. And… it was pitch black.

Half way up we met a crazy Chinese guy called Mai, he was climbing in fashion trainers, his normal clothes and clear plastic waterproof jacket and trousers, the sort you might buy at a theme park before getting on a log flume, and no gloves. His mate had given up but he clearly had summit fever and joined us for the rest of the climb.

When you get to the crater, which is 3740ft, the actual summit or highest point is around the other side of the crater so you have to walk another 20mins around the bloody thing to say you’ve actually reached the top. When we got to the top station where the crater is we were so cold we were starting to shiver. It was clear that we had not climbed above the cloud and rain (the thought of which had kept me going for the last 3 hours) therefore there’d be no bloody sunrise for us to see. It was so wet that we couldn’t have got the camera out to take a shot to prove we’d got there. Sunrise wouldn’t have been for another 30mins as we’d made good time but we did the sensible thing and decided to get down.

So… Mount Fuji… I can say I have climbed Mount Fuji, but I haven’t seen it… I did reach the crater but I didn’t see that…. We got up there before sunrise but didn’t see that either. I did, however, sleep in a box and nearly got hypothermia…