Climbing Mt Fuji

For all you even thinking of climbing it...it's HARD. Yes, it's touristy and stuff, especially during the on-season. But it's not like it's paved all the way up. And it's HIGH. You WILL find it hard to breathe, regardless of whether you actually get altitude sickness.

Well, okay, some background to put the following comments into perspective. I'm Asian, 5' 2", 120 lbs ish, and not terribly in shape. My idea of a workout is a 45 minutes of a dance video.

Fuji was HARD. The ascent was difficult; the descent was difficult and horrifying. We were a group of 10, starting from the 5th station at around 6pm. We got to our rest house somewhere almost at the 8th station at around 10:30 pm. We were then told that most people, in order to reach the summit to watch the sunrise, leave around midnight. Midnight! Uhm, yeah, so we caught like an hour's worth of sleep and set out again. I didn't think the altitude would affect me much. After all, I'm relatively small and so I don't need as much oxygen, right? WRONG! It was definitely hard to breathe. Every step made me pant. It felt like there was a weight on my chest all the time. By the time I reached the top (not in time for the sunrise, but almost!), any kind of exertion faster than a snail's pace made me feel nauseated. Yah, this shit is no joke, it sucks.

The ascent was just tiring, but there was the tantalizing reward of ever greater views. The descent was by the Fujinomiya route, which was a zigzag route down the mountain. It was awful. Fuji is like how I'd imagine Mars to be, all red volcanic scree, some loose gravel and some big rocks. I couldn't decide which was better, going down. Big rocks offer stability, but you have to pick your footing through them. Loose gravel you can just slide down...but sliding down it sucks and I fell on my butt/twisted my ankle/screwed up my knee about a zillion times. Permanent damage! And it was sunny and hot.

Okay so here's the advice.

Things I particularly couldn't live without:
Headlamp. I definitely needed BOTH my hands to help me scramble up the mountain at night, and the headlamp was invaluable in letting me figure out where to put my feet.
Gloves. Volcanic scree, remember? Without gloves I couldn't really have used my hands to help me up. Or gripped the rope tightly to keep me from falling so much, all the way down the mountain.
Sunglasses. Sunrise at the top, brutal sun on the way down. And since we were above the clouds...yeah. Even more brutal. On that note...
Sunscreen. The power of sunscreen, man. Some of us in the party had huge stripes of red from where they missed a swathe of skin with their sunscreen. I applied it twice, and I still got burned on my neck. And I rarely burn! I usually just tan.

Other stuff:
Hiking up the mountain in jeans is okay. Really. But really, I should have brought a complete set of clean clothes and an alternate set of shoes or something, cuz after the climb I spent like 8 hours of the rest of the day on a train, feeling pretty gross.





The ascent was totally worth it. The descent? Not so much. We were lucky...it didn't rain, and it wasn't even that cold. And our group was very good.