My first day itinerary was as follows: Get up at 4 AM, drive to Chicago (3 hr drive). Park in long-term, fly to Japan (13 hr flight). Pick up backpack, take trains to the local mountain town of Gotemba(3 hr ride). Take a taxi to the Trailhead(30 min ride). Start climbing Fuji by 7:30 PM, hike through the night, summit at 5:30 AM in time for sunrise. Climb back down by 9 AM, take the taxi/train back to Tokyo(3.5 hr ride), explore a bit of Tokyo, check into hotel & crash.
Yeah….it was a long day.
Things went really smoothly initially. The plane ride was fine – I slept during most of it to stock up on sleep. However plane sleep doesn’t seem to be of the same quality as a good night’s rest as I’d find out later.
I was out of the airport quickly & the train-ride to the countryside was incredibly scenic & as usual Japanese trains are 100% on time 100% of the time. The local cabbie had no problem taking me to a remote location 30 minutes outside of town in the middle of the night; I guess he’s used to crazy foreigners climbing this random mountain.
After being warned by the cab driver that the climb is incredibly tough, I set out to begin my ascent, surprised to see some climbers finishing their descent. Though this is the least traveled & longest, most difficult route up the mountain, it seems to be more popular than some other mountains I’ve climbed!
The night-time climb was unfortunately not conducive to pictures, but I did take some videos of the ascent. Check them out in the full album(link at top of page). The problems started after I got past 3000 meters. Climbing any tall mountain, you pass through multiple layers of clouds, working your way up from one layer to the next. In between cloud layers, weather is usually great. However clouds are moisture, and once inside you have gusting winds, bursty, pouring rain(that was raining entirely sideways!), and temperatures drop significantly.
Unfortunately it was here that I found out my new 5.11 Tactical daypack & pants were in fact not waterproof as advertised. Luckily my trusty Mountain Hardwear ultralight jacket was so this was more of an annoyance than anything – though my passport & spare clothes were all drenched. Coupled with the continuous(and I mean continuous from start to finish without break) 25% grade and lack of sleep & food, this eroded my willpower quite a bit. I then realized that I’d made the mistake of climbing too fast, arriving at the highest hut well before dawn. If I’d continued at that rate I’d have summitted before dawn. With the present weather conditions the summit was no place to sit & wait for sunrise!
So I decided to sneak into the hut(since I had no reservation), and catch a 45 minute nap. Feeling refreshed after my nap, I closed the final 2 km & 600 m of elevation in the next 90 minutes & summitted at around 6 AM. My brilliant sunrise plans were foiled however, as the summit was inside a huge cloud obscuring any view. I couldn’t even see into the volcanic crater from the rim.
Despite the lack of view, I found summitting to be incredibly satisfying. Climbing 8000 feet in adverse weather after a 13 hour plane ride & 6 hrs of additional travel felt pretty good!
On my way down, I stopped in at the highest hut, to find out that they’d opened for the day & had a nice hearth fire going to warm climbers up. Stepping out of the rain, I ordered some Amazake chaya(a delicious sweet milk sake) and a bowl of hot Ramen noodles. I’ve had a lot of Ramen, but even considering I was hungry, this was by far the best Ramen I’d ever had bar none. It was so good I had seconds, something I basically never do!
The route down was especially incredible. You descend via a separate route, called the Osunabashiri(The Great Sand Run). It’s literally a straight run down the entire mountain in foot deep volcanic ash & micro scree(Fuji is a dormant Stratovolcano). This basically means you can take giant bounding leaps sprinting down the mountain with absolutely no stress to your knees, as the ash soaks up all of the impact.
The effect is a half-run half-slide down the mountain. It was unbelievably fun, and what took 10 hours to ascend took only 3 on my way down. This without hiking poles to save the knees! I’d never experienced anything quite like it before – check out the album for some videos!
Returning to the bottom, I chatted with a large group of climbers from Shell Oil(apparently Shell has a huge mountain climbing group within the company). They were there from all over the world – Russia, Europe, Africa, the Americas – to climb Fuji. This made me feel a bit less crazy for flying halfway across the world to climb a mountain!
Taking the cab & train back to Tokyo, it was again raining there. I spent an hour at Akihabara before checking into my traditional Japanese Ryokan hotel located in the oldest part of Tokyo – The Asakusa Ryokan Shigetsu. I soaked in the Rotemburo public hot-springs bath before crashing at 5 PM. Those 14 hours of sleep were the best thing in the world. To the Victor goes the good night’s rest!
Planetary Muffin Expeditions 
