Fuji 2007

Finally I publish a few pictures of the mt fuji climb in september 2007.

About Fuji climbing

With 3 other friends we left Tokyo at 8pm. Got at the 5th station of Fuji (2300 m) around 10. Is dark but everywhere I see small lights coming from the torch light of the thousands of people who are starting to climb.
While climbing I realized that Japaneses are great artists, manager, committed workers, funny companion but not such good hikers. Sorry I had to say this. The equipment they have is extraordinary, probably only Messner and few others have the same quality. But at the end the most important thing, legs, do not seem to be extraordinary.
Somehow this is the unique thing about climbing Fuji: it is not a normal mountain it is the holy mountain for Japaneses. Even if the climbing process seems more a well studied touristic event, the fact that normal people with not much preparation (but good equipment!) climb on it during the night to see the sunrise is impressive. Here again one might see the shinto spirit towards nature. As for cherry blossom time japaneses show once again the pleasure for natural phenomenon. Even if they live in Tokyo. Even if Japan in some occasion is extremely artificial.
Getting back to the hike. We leave at 10 the 5th station and start walk on the Fujisan slope. I recommend to climb in the night because it is an unforgettable experience. Fuji looks as an enchanted mountain. Every few hundreds meter there is a hut selling food, drinks and marking the wood stick that you can by at the beginning of the hike as a souvenir.
A few observations: even if it is 3 am and i am at 3000m i am in a crowd of people, sometimes queuing seems the national sport. The price of drink and foods is connected to the altitude. Higher you go, pricer they get.
Around 5 we are almost at the top. Everyone stops walking: at 5.10 the sun will rise.
At the top (3776m) the crater is bigger then we thought. There is a beautiful view and hundreds of Japaneses sleeping. We join them for a nap. Then we start coming down and it is a surprise what we see: while climbing in the night we did not see anything that was around us. When the get on the bus at 2 pm, the 14 hours walking help us to fall asleep quickly.