Mt. Fuji

James…if you are reading this, thanks so much for planning the trip up Mt. Fuji; I had a wonderful time. Also, don’t read any further…

In July, a group of 6 of us hiked up Mt. Fuji. And when I say this was the worst experience of my life…I’m not exaggerating. When I told my teachers at school that we were planning on hiking Fuji I got a lot of “Why would you ever do that?” reactions. That should have been my first clue.

We started hiking at 8pm so we could make the 8 hour trek and be at the summit to watch the sun rise at 4am. This was all after a four hour train/bus ride that left me a little car sick. The hike started well enough. I had enough water and some crackers (I didn’t realize we were trying to make a deadline so I wasn’t as prepared as I should have been. I thought we would be stopping about half way to get some sleep).

Imagine climbing steep stairs for 8 hours straight. I was doing ok until about 2am and then I just couldn’t do any more. I was so hungry, tired, and sick (altitude sickness was setting in) that the only thought in my head was “I have to get off this mountain or I am going to pass out and fall down the hill”. I told the group to go ahead of me and I was just going to lay on the side of the mountain and sleep. Paul didn’t want to leave me alone so the rest of the group kept hiking and we stayed for a few minutes to rest. After that Paul had to drag me up the rest of the mountain because the only way down was to reach the top and start on the descending trail from there. And when I say he had to drag me I’m not kidding. At some points the steps got so steep that he literally had to pick me up and carry me. He’s such a trooper.

Well we finally got above the clouds but not quite to the summit when the sun rose. It was pretty, I think. I don’t remember everything clearly because I was feeling so awful. The weekend we did this was a national holiday so the mountain was crammed with people. The summit got so crowded that it took about two hours to climb the last 200 meters. This was good for me because I was moving about that fast on my own.

I finally got to the summit. The rest of the group wanted to hike around the rim of the crater but I wasn’t up for that so they went ahead and I just collapsed where I was and slept for a hour. I didn’t even realize at the time that I was on the edge of a 10 foot drop. Good thing I was too tired to move around much.

I was so excited for the trip down the mountain because I heard it was only a fraction of the time to get down as it took to get up. Little did I know that the way down was going to be the hardest part. So after waiting 50mins in line for the only bathroom at the summit and paying 2$ for it we were on our way down. Unfortunately, we had spent to much time at the summit and only had three hours to get down before our bus left us and we had no way back to the train station. The trip down usually takes 5 hours (so I’ve heard). So down the mountain we ran but we couldn’t really run. Unlike the ascending trail, which was more like what a you think a mountain should be with lots of boulders and solid dirt to hike up, the way down is a steep zig-zag path of volcanic sand and dust. You would take one step, sink into the group about 5 inches and slide another three feet down the path. It killed my knees and hurt my butt from falling down so much. Not to mention the several rock slides that were started every time someone stepped off the path. One rock slide sent tire sized rocks flying down the side crossing several paths and coming very close to knocking a few people off the mountain. It freaked me out.

We made it down in time to catch our bus and everyone got home relatively unscathed. We were covered in dust and grim. Our hair had all turned this Mars colored red and I sneezed red dust for the next two days.

Most people that have climbed Fuji said that about two weeks later they were really happy they did it but wouldn’t do it again. It’s been 4 weeks for me and I’m still not convinced the whole experience didn’t take 2 years off my life.