Mt Fuji---Completed , one of my bucket lists

On 16 to 18 July, my friend and I climbed Mt Fuji.

We took the highway bus from Shinjiuku station to 5th Station of Mt Fuji. Then had lunch and rested for about one hour, about 1:30pm, we started from the mountain entrance of Yoshida trail. Since this year, the entry fee of Yen 2000, and daily number restriction of 4000 have been implemented. It is good thing for the safety of all.

It was raining a bit, we started off slowly, the first part was really like the hiking in Bukit Timah Hill. after that, many zig zig turns, the alleviation gradually increased.

We passed the sixth station , it is the police station, with some mountain climbing advisory, we took a bit energy gel and continued for seventh station.

The journey was not so long, after about two and half hours , we reached the first seventh station mountain hut, 花の屋、from here onwards, every mountain hut is about 10 meters higher, ours is the third mountain huts in seventh station.

Reaching the mountain huts, it was about 3:30pm, by the time of taking down the rain jacket, I realized that my rain jacket was not well waterproof, my half body was totally wet. Good thing was I bought 2 sets of clothes, I quickly changed into the dry clothes, and went out to enjoy the breathtaking view.

The sky turned bright bit by bit, by the 4:30pm, we actually could see moon, and beautiful sunset.

rainbow

sunset

We had a nice and simple dinner, then went back to hut to rest. We could not see any star as it was cloudy, but we decided to wake up at 4:20am to see sunrise.

During the night, I woke up a few times to go to toilet, at midnight, the group of people went out for summit, despite the heavy rain; at around 2:00am, another group of people went out for summit, we woke up at 4:20am, the sky still was cloudy, but rain had stopped, we could see vaguely the sun behind the clouds.

After that we departed our first hut, went up to eighth station, from 7th to 8th station, it is all the way rocky road, actually, there is no road, maybe kind of path. We needed to literally "climb" using out hands and feet :)

From our 7th station huts to 8th station huts, there are about 10 huts away; the distance-wise was not too long, but the elevation was great. I did feel my backbag heavy during this part of climbing.

But the weather was so good, we were able to see the far away mountains, the valley, the lakes and cities below, it was fascinating.

We finally reached our hut at 8th station around 11:00pm, and after quickly settling down, we went up to summit. The top of mountain was soon turning to foggy and raining, we could not see anything.