Mt. Fuji is the 2nd highest single mountain in the entire world. It is 3,776m tall or 12,388ft. Sounds formidable, right? Of course it does...but still, thousands of people make the trek from Station 5 to the Summit every year so I'm thinking it must be possible. J is an avid climber and of course has been dying to climb it, so we heard that a group of about 40 people from his squadron were going and we signed up. I was only slightly nervous because I haven't climbed much, nothing even close to as big as Fuji, but I knew with him by my side I would be just fine. Isn't it fun to think back on all the stupid shit you've thought in your life??? Anyway, I digress.
So J began putting together our backpack, filled it lovingly with snacks, water, rain gear, etc. I helped him do the final checklist on Thurs afternoon and we headed to a potluck Key Spouse social that I had been invited to as a new Key Spouse. Now, this was a great time and I met some really nice ladies, but in hindsight we should not have gone because it only afforded us getting about 4 hours of sleep before the bus left for Fuji. This would be our 1st of many tips on successfully climbing Mt. Fuji: get at least 8 hours of sleep. We will never know (ok, I will never know) if this would have made a difference but I imagine it could not have hurt one bit. So, 0200 on Friday we meet the bus and our sleepy crew is off. J was really excited that not only did one of his troops (Dugan) come on the trip but Namba-san came too! Namba-san is an avid runner and adventurist that works in the shop. A few weeks ago he ran a race from the first station of Fuji to the fifth is less than an hour and a half. On top of his active life he has the coolest personality and a never-ending supply of cheer and awesome stories (L says he sounds like the Japanese version of J based on that description). It took about 2 hours to arrive at Station 5 and we are greeted by 50-ish degree temps (L is in heaven) and that kind of creepy cool light that occurs right before dawn. Yes, that's right, the sun rises around 0430 every day here so we knew we were in for a treat because we'd get to see it. We were asked to be back at the bus by 5:30 that night...which seemed completely doable standing there at 4am.
We started our climb at 04:40 and everything went smoothly...we stopped to take pictures of the amazing scenery and sunrise and all was happy. About 3 hours in, I even said out loud "this isn't so bad, I'm having fun!" This was my personal death sentence, as it got crazy hard after that. In my mind it was two different hikes...so if you want a fun, challenging, yet not stupid hard climb, climb Mt. Fuji for about 3 hours and turn around. Dugan started with us and for most of that first three hours it was just the three of us. We stopped to rest at a corner and we looked down the trail and saw Namba-san and a small group of others from our group coming up. I (J) was elated to be ahead of Namba for any part of the trail and to see him. For a moment I thought maybe we could climb together. Shortly after we took pictures we hiked for a while longer and when we stopped to rest the rest pressed on. I was glad Dugan got to join a faster group because as the story continues you will see why ours was not the wagon to be hitched to.
Side note: this was a very busy mountain (see pics below). We saw every age. I am not even kidding when I say we saw a probably 5 year old boy being "helped" along by his father. This made it an especially interesting experience to be passed by a middle-schooler and a probably 70-something year old man in the same group. Btw, the group of middle-schoolers were pretty much laughing and playing the entire time...yelling at each other and tossing rocks, like you know, we climb Fuji all the time (which they probably do). I told myself that if they can do it, hey we have a chance!
The "happy time" was over. The trail became extremely rocky...as in, I am stretching up with all that I have, actually mountain climbing for large periods of time. My legs shake a lil but I still think "its cool" and keep going. We have come to call this stretch the "hell stretch" because it was the turning point of our climb. This was about 0800 and we were in hell for about 2 hours. This was between station 7 and 8, mind you. 2 hours of intense climbing and NO stations in between. There were a few rest huts that you could use the restroom at (for 200 yen) and get a stamp on your Mt. Fuji hiking stick but no stations that you could check off on your way to the Summit. Because, after all, that's the point of all this, right? To reach the top. So you can imagine how daunting the task is starting to become when we are becoming genuinely exhausted already and have about 676 vertical meters to go...which equals about 2km of trail. At this point, we looked up and saw what we thought could have been the top so we had a small surge of hope and pressed on. This was nowhere near the top. Sorry to spoil it for you. We asked some fellow travellers and they said that it was the original 8th station and cheerily told us we didn't have far to go. "1.6 kilometers! That's only a mile!" says the cheery Japanese man that told me he has climbed this over ten times. On the way down he told me when we ran into him again that he was climbing it again tomorrow. Key-chi-guy = Crazy, this guy is definitely keychiguy. At this point in our journey a small group of fellow travelers were banded together meeting each other at each rest stop and passing each other with smiles and cheers. An older gentleman gave us candy and had us all cheering A-A-OH! before we would trek on. A-A-Oh I was told is the Japanese version of yelling FIGHT ON! We met other service members from a number of bases. And on this mountain the Japanese were the most friendly of the friendliest people on earth. When we would stop and rest, they would smile and tell us "rest, take your time" and smile. This was hard for us at this point as we knew our group was nearing the top and we saw the last of our group pass us. We met a couple from Spain and J saw a few Germans. The funniest experience for me (J) was hiking up I had my hat on and saw boots coming down toward me. I instinctively said sumimasen (excuse me) in Japanese. I looked up and he said " I am French!" and I said "Sorry dude I don't know how to say excuse me in french" but then realized I was just tired and have been thinking in Japanese too long as Liz remembered its pardon e moi. I said "Oh yeah" but couldn't have cared less about French guy at this point of the climb.
We made it past the 2 rest huts between 3400m and station 8.5 at 3500m. This gives you an idea of the trail, if you can have at least 2 rest huts on your 100m vertical ascent...you know it is effing crazy and pretty much the longest 100m of your life. We kept going. I don't know how but we did. My feet ached, I had blisters, my legs hurt, and to top it all off, my (L's) stomach had started acting up. I was having Gastrointestinal Distress to put it mildly. So, in short, this day just couldn't get any better! I honestly felt like Frodo climbing Mt. Doom in those last few meters. J did great even though he was hurting too...he loves climbing but hadn't climbed a mountain in about 10 years. Plus he was carrying ALL the weight...probably about 40 pounds in the pack with the almost 10 pounds of water we took. We had drank it ALL at this point, probably most of it by L which did not help the stomach situation. This was an incredible bonding experience for us. J told me several times "you're doing so good!" and each and every time it would give me a surge and help me along. I needed it. I tried to return the favor and encourage J as much as I could but I feel like it was one-sided. I was really struggling, I kept randomly crying and I'm not ashamed to say it. It was, by far, the hardest thing I have ever done and I honestly don't know how I made it as far as I did. I can only assume his encouragement was part, if not all, of why I did. At around 3550m we met up with a fellow servicemember that we had talked to previously and he said "yeah its only another hour to the top" and when he passed by I just lost it. I knew I could not continue on, not with feeling the way that I did and knowing that our group was already so far ahead of us. I was finished. I had been thinking it for a while and I knew when this guy gave us such disparaging news that I couldn't go on. I was incredibly disappointed, but mostly for J because he would not continue on without me. I begged him to keep going, showed him the spot in which I promised to sit however long it took him to climb up and come back for me but he refused. He said we could try again at some point and maybe make it to the top another time. I was a tiny bit encouraged to see the "oh shit" trail that someone else had carved that cut over to the descent trail. J looked at his GPS and noted we made it 3557m on a 3776m climb. It was 2pm at this point and we had been climbing for 9 hrs and 20 mins. Roughly how long it's taken you to read this blog post! ;)
It wasn't over yet by a long shot. At the point that we took the "chicken" exit to the descent trail we still had to climb down. Yeah, folks...you climb up and then DOWN! Freakin climbing, who knew. We were already exhausted of course and the constant sliding along the skree was a challenge...to which I succumbed at least 3 times, one of which I got some "wicked" road rash on my hand as I threw it back to catch myself. J thought it was so cool that I got road rash from a volcano but it didn't feel too cool. J said all he got was mental scars. About halfway down, J was pretty much done and even said he was glad we turned back. I don't think he realized how tired he was until then. No greeting fellow climbers, just plodding away. Most of the time J did not even sit down because it was so much work to get back up with the pack on. So you can imagine how much his already aching feet were hurting after that. Anyway we plunged down 53 switch-backs, which for you non-climbers are basically zig-zags down the mountainside. This took us nearly 4 hours. This descent started off really fun, we were a little euphoric at the idea of being DONE and it felt good to switch muscle groups to descend. With 2km left in the descent, I became so despaired and was so completely wiped that I started to freak. I asked J "What if we can't make it down?" and his kind reply was "we can, honey. We'll have to make it." Later on he told me this was the only point in the day that he wanted to laugh at me...he knew I was just beyond done when I'm asking such a silly question. Like we could just stop and die on the mountain. Which is where I think I said the quote from up above. Somewhere in here. It's kind of a blur of keeping my head down and thinking "just keep walking"...keeping in mind both of us, at some points, were going about 15 steps and stopping. Other points we really felt the pull to keep going, not to mention the fact that we were getting more oxygen with every meter we descended...so we pushed through several spots that would have been great to rest, just eager to get it over with.
It was a 6km descent and we finally made it back to the bus at 6pm. So, even with turning around early we were still the last 2 people on the bus. I told J that they needed to up the random drug testing in the squadron because I'm pretty sure all those people were on speed. Except for Namba-san, who is just badass. After the long bus ride home, we hobbled to our van and headed over to Burger King, where I enjoyed the best Tendercrisp sandwich I have probably ever had and reveled in the ZERO guilt after burning probably 2000 calories on the mountain. Actually myfitnesspal says that I burned 4726 calories...so I think I'm good! Whether we made it to the top or not it really was a wonderful bonding experience...one that I would never, ever, ever, ever like to repeat. Ever. Enjoy the best parts of the day posted below as the fatigue led to us not caring if we ever took pictures again. Now, if you'll excuse us we are going to go do NOTHING for about 6 months.
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