Day 24 — Climbing Fuji-san
I am not a big fan of outdoor activities, I don’t hike, run, or jog. I don’t do any activities that require physical exertion, even cycling two minutes to the convenience store is an inconvenience for me. Yet for some reason I decided to climb Fuji-san with people I just met.
I visited my friends at the beach in mid-August this year. There was a slightly larger group of people than usual with a few people whom I hadn’t met yet. We spent a couple of hours swimming, drinking, and playing volleyball on the beach and we all got along very well. The group invited me to climb to Fuji-san with them in 2 weeks. I said, “yeah, why not”. I heard climbing Fuji-san was a fairly easy and leisurely climb. Not entirely true.
Two weeks later, 3 members were down and Saturday 4th had arrived. I took the train from Chigasaki around 5:30 am and met with the rest of the gang at Shinjuku. The four of us, Yuta, Niki, Esma, and I got on the bus with a coach-load of others, and by 11:00 am we arrived at the 5th station of Fuji-san. We fuelled up with some food, got ready and started climbing one of the last public hikes of the year.
All fine for the first five minutes, “I can do this all day”, I mistakenly thought. Not even 10 minutes later, Esma and I had already started panting and sweating so we took our rain jackets off. Yuta and Niki seemed fine so they went ahead and Esma and I continued to climb slower. Before long we noticed we were already at the 6th station.
Climbing from 5th to 6th station wasn’t a big deal, to be honest
We naively thought the rest of the climb wouldn’t be so hard. Yet again we were wrong.
We took a small break and then we were off again. The first half of the climb to station 7 was alright but the last half of it was quite challenging as we had to climb over big rocks. Though compared to what was to come, it wasn’t too difficult. It took 2 hours for us to go from 6th to 7th station.
After another little rest, we started climbing again. However this time the level was way too high for us (except for Niki) and we ended up separating. Niki just went ahead, I continued alone, Esma and Yuta were tired so they were left trailing behind.
Here’s where it took a turn for the worse. It started to rain. All my gear was supposed to be waterproof but in reality, it was not. At this time the temperature was around 7 degrees and it was raining. My feet were soaked, my gloves were wet and I was trying to climb rocks with one large and unwieldy climbing stick in my hand. It got dark and I felt miserable. All I wanted to do was to reach the hotel and get warm.
I stopped and had a hot chocolate at one of the stations for a pick-me-up. I got a bit warm and then continued my climb. Each time I saw a hotel, I thought Ok this might be our hotel! It wasn’t. Our hotel was on the top. It was already dark and I was using my headlamp. I was seeing some other miserable people like me on the way. And luckily in the last 30 mins of the climb, I came across a guide and he helped me keep my motivation, at least to the hotel.
Niki was already at the hotel when I arrived on 2nd. The thing about this hotel is that it was more like a wooden cabin, a freezing shack atop a mountain with no heaters. I had a waterproof cover on my bag, but sure about its waterproof abilities, I forgot to put my change of clothes in a plastic bag. They all got wet.
An hour later Yuta and Esma arrived. We had dinner and went back to our shack. The guide came later and said the weather conditions were very bad and it might be super cold at the summit, and they seriously thinking about canceling it. We were freezing, our clothes were soaking wet, we were tired and frankly, we had had enough! We honestly decided not to climb to the top.
After a couple of hours of sleep, we woke up around 1:30 am and discussed it with the group. We were all warmer and feeling less tired. The weather seemed a bit better with no rain so we decided to do the night climbing so we could watch the sunrise at the summit.
Maybe because we rested and were feeling better, the night climbing wasn’t as hard as the daytime climb. Sure, It was freezing enough but it was still okay. After a 2–3 hours climb, we finally reached the summit! The scenery was spectacular!
It was a heck of an experience for me and I will probably never forget it. Was it really worth climbing Fuji-san? I would say definitely it is. Would I ever do it again? Well, probably not.
This article is part of the 2021 HENNGE Advent Calendar. An Advent calendar is a special calendar used for counting down the days till Christmas. 2021 HENNGE Advent Calendar presents one article by one HENNGE member per day for 25 days until Christmas, 2021
