Fuji: The ascent

Tackling Fuji. The highest mtn in Japan at 3,776m. Couple ways to go. 1) the daytime hike in the heat. Not too popular, but people do it. 2) start after sunset and climb through the night to see sunrise at the summit(station 10). 3) start in the evening and hike to a hut. sleep until 3.30-4am and then hike to the summit. We went with the last option. Sort of. The bus took us to the 5th station at 2,300m. By the time we started hiking around 7, we needed headlamps. In a way, hiking without seeing where you are headed, helps you hike further and faster than during daylight. At first we thought we wouldn't make it to the 8th station where our hut reservations were. The fact that the lightning was better light than the headlamps had something to do with that. At points we were basically scrambling up the rocks. Maybe a 5.4-5.5 for climbers. The huts seemed so far away and it got to the point that at every hut we passed, we considered stopping. But we kept pushing and made it to our hut around midnight. Exhausted, hungry and ready for sleep at 3,400m. I went outside about 12.30am and noticed heaps of climbers making their way up the mtn. Just a row of headlamps. 'Sleep' was short as we woke up at 4.30 to watch the sunrise. Surprisingly, I was not that sore or tired. The 5 of us rested until 7am and then kept crawling up the mtn side. At our hut the oxygen in the air was 68%. At the summit it would be 56%. That slowed us down a lot. The mtn got hot very quickly and we ran into much more traffic than at night. Passing through the final Torii gates, we summited about 2 hours later. The view was amazing. It was such a great feeling to be at the top. I took many, many pictures but will have to post them later. Yay! We did it!