Why you shouldn't climb Mt Fuji in the rain

Imagine the scenario: you're standing near the top of Japan's highest mountain, at an elevation of 3600m. The temperature is around 5 degrees, it's 4am, pitch-dark, and you're exposed on the mountain face. You've been out in the rain for the last eight hours, and you're soaked to the skin. You're wearing only a t-shirt and light 3/4 pants, with fluttering shreds of raincoat over the top, as the warmer clothing in your bag is soaked through. You're standing in a tremendous line of people that moves, on average, one step every four seconds.

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So, this weekend I climbed Mt Fuji. It was an interesting experience. Not all bad, but not an experience I'm about to repeat in a hurry! Like many who climb Mt Fuji, we decided to climb during the night so as to reach the summit and watch the magnificent sunrise. We spent a total of 14 hours on the mountain; from 9pm to 11am - seven hours to climb up, three hours of rest (in bits and pieces), four hours to climb down. And during the entire 14 hours, it never stopped raining.

I went with three friends, and we met at 5th station of the Kawaguchiko trail. This is the hiking trail which most people take to climb Mt Fuji. The bus pulled up in front of the station at around 8pm. There weren't many people around, and it was very, very dark.

We bought hiking sticks to aid us in our climb, and set out. On our bus in, we'd met these three nice French people. They waited around for us to be ready, and we started the hike together. I couldn't believe how dark it was, and the rain was drizzling down. Without flashlights, we couldn't even see our hand in front of our face. I was wearing a rain coat, rain pants, and had wrapped plastic bags around my socks, in my shoes, to keep out the water.

From the 5th station, there are four stations on the way up to Mt Fuji. We reached the 6th one fairly effortlessly in half an hour; it's the closest to the bottom. We stopped there only a minute and continued on.

Now, physically, for me, the 6th to 7th station trek was the hardest. Part of it was that at this point, I was trying to keep up with everyone else, but I couldn't. And - obviously, being a mountain - the whole walk was uphill; steep slopes and vast numbers of steep stairs that you had to lift your whole body into, to ascend. My heart was pounding madly and even though I kept taking short breathers, after a few seconds of walking, I'd feel exhausted again.

I was walking with K, one of my friends, who claimed a similar lack of fitness (though I think she was better than me, and had to wait for me more often than vice versa). At this point I seriously doubted whether I could make it to the top of the mountain; being able to walk three seconds before getting exhausted, was not a good pace for ascending a mountain. I told her that my goal was just to get to the 7th station, and if I really couldn't do it, then I couldn't do it.

However, eventually lights appeared ahead, and we reached the 7th station earlier than I'd expected. We'd been climbing for about an hour and a half, so we stopped in at the cabin for food and drinks. It was pretty cool outside (probably around 12 degrees), and I've never had such a marvellous instant coffee with powdered milk before!

The Kawaguchiko trail has the main stations - 5 to 10 - but also various mountain huts. We'd climb up and look in hopefully, only to see that they weren't welcoming hungry climbers. We had looked in at two huts at the 7th station before finding a friendly guy who let us in to eat. We stayed there about 45 minutes; it was our longest rest during the ascent.

Having reached the 7th station earlier than expected, and cheered by the food - and running into our French friends again - I felt heartened to continue the hike. And the 7th to 8th stretch was my favourite part of the climb. This was because we spent about an hour negotiating rocks, climbing with handholds and careful footholds. Like clambering on the rocks at the beach as a child. I found this much easier going than constantly walking up slopes and steps.

Also, around this pass, there were quite a few other climbers, so at times, we had to climb in file. This meant I could go at a steady pace without feeling like I was going too slow for the group. I started to have fun, and singing to myself.

We reached the 8th station around 2am, I think. It was still very dark, and drizzling. It was getting cool and I was glad I'd had the foresight to bring rubber dishwashing gloves to wear; everyone else had bare hands, or gloves that were soaked through in moments. But it was interesting to look out over the mountain pass, into the mist, and see either nothing, or the dim lights of other climbers I had a headlight myself, which was very effective, until the clip broke around the 8th station. After that I had to manoeuvre the light with one hand, and hold my walking stick with the other.

The problem hereafter was that we just couldn't find a place to sit and have something to eat. There were mountain huts and stations, but they were either for people staying overnight as guests, or pre-booked tour groups, or something. Maybe I just didn't understand the system, but we'd go into a hut, with enthusiasm, ready to order from the menu posted outside, only to be told 'you can't come inside'. A lot of these hut managers were downright unfriendly. But then, imagine living on Mt Fuji for two or three months a year... it's not a cushy lifestyle.

Being unable to go inside and sit down also meant we were unable to pause to do anything like sit down and fix a broken headlamp, or put on warmer clothes. I wanted to do this, but had no place to sit down and do it. The fact is, from the 8th station (it's around 3020m high), it's getting cold. I think it was 11 degrees there. But by this point, despite all of our precautions, all of us were soaked. This meant our resting time was shorter. Since we couldn't go inside, our only option was to sit outside on the occasional benches, fully exposed to the elements. If you stop moving, you start freezing.

And although I was cold, I never wanted to stand still enough in the cold and rain, to put my jeans or jacket on. What's more, most of the items in my bag were soaked through; the backpack I'd thought would be rainproof, wasn't. And I had my doubts as to whether donning a sopping wet winter jacket would make me warmer. At any rate, I was so cold I couldn't manipulate my fingers well enough to put them on if I'd wanted to.

8th to 9th station had some pretty rough going, but it was cold enough to force me not to rest too long, so I made more progress than I had on earlier, similarly steep sections in the 6th-7th leg. The 9th station (if we even saw it; it wasn't obvious) offered no relief for us, so we had no choice but to proceed to the summit. I couldn't bear to stand still for more than a minute; it must've been about 8 degrees and I was still in the t-shirt and short pants I'd been wearing at the base of the mountain. The raincoat and pants were starting to fall apart.

I was just hoping with all my might that there would be a warm place to sit and eat at the summit. Even if I had to pay $50 to stay in one of those 'accommodation' huts, I'd do it for the sake of an hour inside somewhere.

My co-worker Pete climbed Mt Fuji a few weeks ago, and since then had been encouraging me (and everyone, really) to do it. He enthused about the sunrise, about the amazing night views ('the best part of resting is you can just sit down on the mountainside and see all the night lights for miles around') and the amazing view from the top. He warned me to bring warm clothes for the higher altitudes. Of course, all of his experiences were completely useless to us because of the continual, maddening rain. We couldn't see anything at any point.

This final part of the climb was so bad. I mean, it was heartbreaking. Like I described at the beginning of the post. It's horribly, horribly cold; everyone is wet and tired, but because sunrise wasn't far away, everyone wanted to reach the top at the same time. So there was a huge queue; thus everyone was waiting for ages on these mountain trails, climbing one step every four or five seconds, at a time when you desperately need momentum to keep you energised. And you'd look up, into the mist and drizzle, and you could see countless rows of fairy lights; but you knew those pretty lights represented more climb...

The thing is, this went on for around one and a half hours, I think. You'd make progress, and make progress, and look up - and see another six or seven zigzagging rows of lights ahead - and then you'd painstakingly cover more ground - and look up and there's just as many paths ahead as before. I was so cold. I could hear one of our party saying to K, 'I promise you, we will make it to the top'. If there had been any option other than to continue waiting in that line, I guess I would've taken it. But there was no choice but to keep climbing, in the hopes that eventually the outlook would change.

However, we made it!! We got to the top of Mt Fuji - 3776m! Just as we reached the summit, light began to creep over the mountainside. Until now, we had done all of our climbing in the pitch-dark. The light was hazy; the sky was full of foggy cloud, and even on the very summit, it was raining. At no point did we climb 'above the clouds', although this is often possible. Also, we couldn't see the slightest hint of a sunrise.

B and I made a beeline for the first building we saw. We could get a 'summit' stamp put on our walking stick, to show our achievement, and we did. Then we went to the next hut which had - oh, glory - food and hot drinks, and seats that people could sit on! This was the first time we'd seen this since station 7, more than six hours earlier. We met up with the French guys again - we'd touched bases at almost every station and mountain hut - and we stayed there for almost two hours, resting. We were so cold, all of us were shivering madly. They told me my lips were blue. We really enjoyed piping hot cocoa and bowls of ramen.

We saw the strangest effect, though, which I've never seen before. Steam was literally pouring off peoples' bodies. We were so cold, now we were in a moderately warm place (at least, out of the elements), and you could see steam rising off of peoples' shirts, or legs. I don't know quite what caused that, but it was pretty interesting. I finally put on my sopping wet coat and my somewhat dry jeans and spare socks. They did make me feel slightly warmer.

There actually wasn't much else to see at the summit (there certainly wasn't a view; only raincloud), so accordingly, we started our descent at around 7am. This period was notable because there was about twenty minutes when it wasn't actually raining; there was just a kind of cloudy fog surrounding us. This was the only time during the entire trip we could take any photos outside.

In some ways the descent was more demoralising than the climb. It's because you know the descent is estimated to take less time than the ascent, so you always feel as if it should be quicker than it is. Also, there are few huts or stations along the way; very few landmarks to watch out for, so you're always just climbing down, down, down, endlessly seeing the same landscapes. There wasn't a single place to rest or have a drink.

The other thing was, you know, Mt Fuji is a volcano. So the slopes are red or brown volcanic rock, much of which is quite loose and scrabbly. It was quite a painstaking effort going downhill for three hours on this kind of landscape. Progress was so slow; it was so easy to slip over (two of us did), and this kind of downhill scrambling is a killer on your ankles and knees.

Also, it continued to rain a lot, and all of us - already wet before - were now completely sopping. Although the temperature was gradually increasing with the daylight and with our decreasing altitude, it was still only around 10, and there was now some wind, so it was really, really cold and unpleasant.

As we descended the mountain, the rocks were gradually puncuated by bunches of yellow wildflowers; as we descended still more, we started seeing other plants and grasses; close to the 5th station, there were loads of trees, bushes, a regular forest. It was nice being able to actually see Mt Fuji, which we hadn't done on the way up (since we were so keen to get up to see the non-existent sunrise). Up close, it looked like a lot of small valleys and hills, actually.

Anyway, I was pretty proud of myself for reaching the top. It was hard afterwards, actually, carrying all my wet clothes and backpack home on the trains; everything weighed a tonne and I was pretty tired. Still, I don't think the physical exertion of the climb was nearly as bad as the cold and discomfort.

So anyway, now I can say I've climbed a mountain. And there's this saying that 'everyone should climb Mt Fuji once, but only a fool climbs it twice'. I thoroughly agree, though I would add that only a fool would climb Mt Fuji in the rain. -_-