Climbing Mt.Fuji

So one of my goals when I came to Japan was to climb Mt.Fuji. I found out that its only open July-August, so a couple of weeks ago I realized that I only had a two week window to climb it, otherwise I'd have to stick around another few months next year. So I called up my friend Leo who also likes climbing to see if he was planning on going. He said he was going the next weekend, so I met up with him and one of his buddies from Nagoya to climb the mountain.

Here is a picture of Fuji. Be aware this is the only picture you are going to see of the mountain in full. In the summer the mountain is usually covered with clouds so its really rare to get a full view without it covered in snow.

Fuji-san 3,776 m

We took a shikansen out there (bullet train) then had to take a bus from the shikansen to the 5th station of Fuji. Its right at the tree line. The great thing was it had been about 35 degrees in the town below, but once we got up to the 5th station it was a nice and cool 18 degrees. (I'm going to talk in the metric system because I have no idea what the F or Ft was)

Me and Leo at the base.
Me and Gavin at the base. Those sticks we are holding are climbing sticks. You get them stamped with the elevation at every station (from 5 to 10). So as we go on you might notice more stamps on them.
Fuji-san surrounded by clouds. It was actually really anti-climatic traveling to station 5 because we kept wondering where the mountain was.


Completely surrounded by clouds now.


Finally we get above the clouds.

Me and Leo at station 8.
Me by this sweet Tori at around station 8.5
We made it to around station 9 by sunset. Luckily we had reservations at a hotel at station 9. When I say hotel, I really mean normal sized house that sleeps 150 people.
Our bedroom. 6 people to a room. I slept next to this old Japanese guy who kept snoring. So I would roll over and hit him as hard as I could, then he would say something in Japanese and I'd act like I was asleep. Gavin had to sleep next to this 30 something Japanese couple. It was a strange nights sleep.

View from the front of the "hotel"

Sunrise on top of Fuji-san. Its prob 4 degrees and 80 km per hour winds.

Below those clouds is the city of Tokyo, which I have still yet to visit.
Me freezing but enjoying the sunrise.
So I think I've decided Japan is in fact a small place. Since I ran into my friends Quinn and Anne on top of Mt. Fuji. This is us around the volcano crater at the summit.
The very top of Fuji. We were so tired by this point we just hiked back down.

Fuji isn't really that hard of a hike, its just really long. It took us about 8 hours up, and 3 hours back down.