There's a quote you'll find everywhere when you search online for "climbing Mt. Fuji" - something about you're crazy to try it once a fool to do it twice...
I completely agree.
Its quite the sentence to say in Japan, "I climbed Mt. Fuji" its even crazier to actually make it all the way! I can't believe I did it! I made it all the way in about 6.5 hours.... CRAZY!!!!! We started off at 6pm thinking that I would need 10 hours because I would foam up in the mouth and everyone else would need to drag me the rest of the way up.... Luckily... or unluckily?! we were up there at like 2 am after extensive stops(sitting in some stupid shed buying Cup Noodles for 5 bucks. Eating slowly so we could have an hour, just to sit away from the wind. Too cheap to shell out 32 bucks an hour to sleep on the floor in the shed... sitting on a bench loosing feeling in limbs another hour....) at the 8th station. The walk up was... hard... rock climbing, stairs, and gravel (gravity against you). It wasn't foam of the mouth hard, thank goodness.
Being above the cloud-line was amazing. Billions of stars could be seen and the sea of clouds beneath you... the beautiful arc of the sky above you.... walking at the same level as the moon! How I wish I had some insanely great camera to catch the shots... but I guess thats the reason you climb it... you can't see it unless you do!
Its nothing I'd ever do again.. or anything like it... It was SO COLD at the top and waiting 2ish hours for the stupid sun to rise so we could take stupid pictures was not worth it but we were there and climbing down without the stupid sunrise shot was just even dumber....
Gahh then coming down! 3-4 hours of just... shuffling and sliding through volcanic rock (black feet under the socks thank you very much) was so errrrrrrrrrrrr..........
Least to say, I'm still sore... but now I can say - I climbed Mt. Fuji!!!
5th Station - where you take a bus to.... takes you about 2500 meters...? and you climb to the top... 3776 meters above sea level....
Before... duh... still smiling...
All you see in the dark....
The walking stick you can buy for 10 bucks... and then they burn an engraving on it when you reach certain stations....
This is what we waited for........
Proof I was up this stupid thing...
Japanese people taking pictures and phoning people...
A friend telling me I look like puke... in which I agree...this wasn't even on at the bottom yet... this was just realizing I had to climb down the stupid volcanic mountain...
Looking down at what I had left .... and then some...
Looking over at how we came up.... use your imagination and crop the next few pictures together...
Owari (end) ~
