Tuesday, 31 August 2004

Fuji Update....

Alright, fine.... more memoirs from my Fuji climb.

It rained and poured but it wasn't as cold as everyone keeps saying. In fact, if it wasn't so rainy and windy the climb could have been pretty confortable!

It was dark. Pitch black, yet some Japanese climbers were climbing the moutain withough flashlights! Scared the Hell out of me when I was scanning the climb ahead and my light shone on a group of huddled climbers. In fact, I think all the non-Japanese were more prepared for the climb.... though I must admit too wearing jeans which got DRENCHED! Word of advice: Wear waterproof clothes. A raincoat doesn't cut it.

Anyway, it was black and you can't see ANYTHING. There are some city lights and it does make the climb more interesting but because of no sunlight, there's also more fog and clouds and dampness. We didn't make it to the top (because of the rain and wind and the token American, after making jokes about Aussies being real tuff, etc) decided to call it quits at the 8th station (about 500m from the top). I was all for a rest (I was REAL wet) but only for an hour or so. Eric went straight to bed in the station/hut.

The "station" isn't a train station, but more a lodge with a Japanese fire in the floor (should have taken a photo) food and 2 rooms with about 30 bunks in each.

At around 4:30am, we could see that it was lighter outside but there was no way to see the sunrise if we kept climbing to the top anyway so we decided to rest some more and head out in a few hours.

At 7:30am we headed outside. The sun had evaporated the clouds and the view was incredible! I compared it to what it must be like to climb the Andes. Eric and Brenton had decided to climb down and give the top a miss. I was a bit disapointed because it would be really cool to climb to the top.... but 500m wouldn't make that much difference to the view... we were told it would take anther 3.5 hours just to climb that little bit extra... so I agreed to climb down as well. The view itself from the 8th station was amazing and we had accomplished quite a bit considering almost all the other tourists had stopped at the 6th and 7th stations for the night because of the rain and we found out on the bus on the way home that most of them had headed back down in the morning.

I think we did pretty well.

More on the way down tomorrow...