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MT. FUJI, JULY 1998 - Fuji-san, the highest point of Japan, the holy mountain... This perfect conical vulcano is snow-capped during most of the year, and therefore hard to climb. However during July and August the mountain is open to everyone who wants to go up this 3776 metres of rock and ashes...

Climbing Mt. Fuji

Worldtravelstories
2006-04-06 21:52:28

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MT. FUJI, JULY 1998 - Fuji-san, the highest point of Japan, the holy mountain... This perfect conical vulcano is snow-capped during most of the year, and therefore hard to climb. However during July and August the mountain is open to everyone who wants to go up this 3776 metres of rock and ashes...

The day before we arrived in the railway station Shin-Fuji, coming from Tokyo. We had stayed in a little hotel, in which there stayed a lot of fellow Mt. Fuji-hikers. Early in the morning we took the bus to the 5th station on Mt. Fuji. This is as far as the bus will take you up the mountain. From this point, we began our hike up, under a cloud-filled sky. Today we would go up to the 7th station, just above 3000 metres, we would sleep there to continue to the top the next day. On the mountain there are 10 'stations' , these are mountain huts with basic, Japanese style, accomodation. There is no water on the mountain, except for the bottled water they sell everywhere along the way... of course the price is high because all of the goods have to be carried up the mountain.

It took us a couple of hours to reach the '7th station'. If you want to sleep in one of the mountain huts, you have to make a reservation well in advance, since places are limited. However upon stating who we were, it was not clear to the 'staff' we had a reservation. We got a "maybe" as answer on this question. Later we found out this was the "old 7th station", so we probably must have a reservation for the "new 7th station", higher up the mountain. As we went further, the "new" 7th station already came in sight when suddenly a thunderstorm broke loose. Within minutes the otherwise till now easy walk became a harsh hike ! We could not see where to walk anymore (I luckily noticed some signs "do not pass - danger !" in time), we were soaked, the wind was fierce. And we were so close to the mountain ...

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