One Heck of a Rock

Photo courtesy of japan-guide.com.

There is an old Japanese proverb that says something along the lines of “He who climbs Mt. Fuji once is a wise man. He who climbs it twice is a fool.”

Normally I like to do some sort of surprise for Amy’s birthday, but when you are planning on hiking 12, 388 feet (3,776 meters) up a dormant volcano you can’t just spring that on someone like you’re going for an afternoon hike. (My cousin who has hiked it twice might disagree.)  The hardest part about planning was finding reliable information, especially in English.  What we did find is that the mountain is open for climbing season in July and August. We also found out that we had multiple options on how to tackle the mountain. We wanted to hike the mountain in the traditional Japanese way so we opted for a night at one of the huts on the trail.  We were put on a waiting list at one of the huts despite calling months in advance. A few weeks later I received an email all in Japanese stating that said we had 2 spots at the Goraiko-Kan hut at station 8.5.  (Thank you to Google Translate). This was the highest hut on the mountain which was about 1,000 vertical feet from the summit (top).

It’s a 2 ½ hour journey involving buses, trains and automobiles to make it to the 5^th station where the hike starts.  We knew it was going to be a long slog to make it to our beds in station 8.5 and since it is peak climbing season we knew it would take some time and patience.  As far as scenic and beautiful, the views in the distance were amazing. The trail consists of volcanic rock that made you feel like you were hiking on the surface of the moon.

After a couple hours of hiking, sore joints, a few Advil and multiple stops to wait for the hiking tour groups, we finally made it to the hut. On a good day this place would be considered rustic and cozy.  By rustic I mean there’s a hint of sewer in the air (but at least they have a western style bathrooms). If you consider 150 smelly climbers cramped into a room that closely resembles a chicken coop cozy, then it was cozy.  The photo and description do not give it justice.  When was the last time that you shared a bed with 8 people? (If you have an answer, we don’t want to know.)  Amy and I were allocated a glorified mat the size of a single bed for both of us (with 6 people next to us), two doll size pillows filled with beans and a blanket that I wasn't going to get under.  I can’t make this up when I tell you that there were times throughout the night that the woman next to Amy kept snuggling with her foot and there were points during the night that I realized I was sleeping butt to butt with the man next to me. Needless to say when you have 150 people stuck in a room to “sleep” there is not a single quiet moment, even with ear plugs! 

Around 1:30 am everyone decided to get up and start hiking so we put back on our smelly gear and walked into the 35°F cold to finish that last 1000 feet.  I was blown away by the streams of people hiking at that time. 

A view from the top of the climbers' headlamps

It only took us about an hour to get to the top, which left a very cold 1 ½ hours to wait for sunrise.  I managed to find some coffee and Amy had some weird corn soup that kept us warm.  That lasted about 5 minutes and we were back to shivering even though we were huddled and twisted together like pretzels.  I had on most of my skiing gear and I was the coldest I have ever been. The 25+ mph wind didn't help!  

Finally about 3:30 am we made the decision to start hiking down the mountain a little bit. So much for the idea of sunrise from the top of Mt. Fuji but it would be close enough.  We walked down the hill about 200 vertical feet and found a perfect quiet spot outside of the wind.  As you can see the sunrise was pretty awesome!

After an amazing sunrise we learned that the hike down was just as bad as the hike up! By that point we had no sleep, limited substantive food, and were just worn out. Although we made it down much quicker than we made it up.  At the bottom we celebrated being alive with some hot food and sake. It was such a wonderful experience but we were both ready to be back in Tokyo to take a shower and have a real bed that we don’t have to share with 6 other people.

Until then,

Raegen & Amy 

P.S. - I forgot to mention that I asked Amy for her hand in marriage as the sun was rising over Tokyo.

  

Going to celebrate. Amy's fingers were a little swollen from the hike....the ring fits now. Phew!