"He who climbs Mount Fuji once is a wise man, he who climbs it twice is a fool."

I could not agree more with that Japanese saying.

It probably would have been a good idea to get a good night’s rest the night before the climb, but there was a party at work on Friday night and I had to catch a train at 5:30am the next morning. So a night of wine and sake and less than four hours of sleep was probably not the best way to start the day off…

It’s still a bit early in the climbing season (which is only July-August), so we couldn’t take the southern route because the summit was still covered in snow. The northern route (Yoshida Trail) is the most popular, but it was harder for us to get to (1 hour on two trains + 5 hour bus ride + another 1 hour bus ride).

We had a lot of time to kill before starting the climb, so we went to an onsen. This was my first time experiencing a public bath in Japan. After getting used to the fact that everyone was naked, it turned out to be quite relaxing.

After taking a bus up to the 5^th station (at 2300 m), we were shocked at how cold it was! We had heard that the Japanese are usually overly prepared for climbing Fuji, but now we all wished that we had more warm layers too. Our group of 7 students from my program joined forces with 2 other Americans and 4 Norwegians, and we nicknamed ourselves Apollo 13… We started hiking at 10pm.

The hike got surprisingly steep and strenuous. It was especially shocking to see all the old people on the mountain! Towards the end, the trail was very congested and the huge procession of people made forward progress very slow. It was really an incredible sight to see all these people slowly marching up Fuji, appearing as a zigzag of lights crawling up the mountain. There was such a strong sense of camaraderie among everyone.

Around 4am, Apollo 13 made it to the summit (3776 m)! It was freezing and super windy. Half an hour later, we got our sunrise on Fuji.

Afterwards, we crammed into a lodge with other tired hikers, I bought an overpriced bowl of miso soup (¥800!), and tried to sleep. We started the descent around 7:30am. It was very steep and rocky, so we ended up running/sliding down the entire way. Back at the base of the mountain, we went to relax and nap back at the onsen. This was the most exhausting weekend of my life.

I’ve been waiting to climb Fuji since my last trip to Japan and I thought this was an incredible experience…but never again...