Well, Fuji proved a worthy adversary. Let's just say that it was a hell of a hike. I guess we were asking for it though. We left Nagano at about 11:30 on Saturday morning and drove the 3 hours to Yamanashi prefecture where Fuji, or at least half of it, resides. It's a big damn mountain. While the air was ridiculously hazy and we couldn't see the thing from 20 kilometers away, at sunset, it cleared off a little and we were able to see the super cone. It's pretty super. Did I mention that we had hiked about an hour up a small neighboring mountain to go rock climbing? Well, that's where I first saw the Fuj-ster. We only climbed a little, primarily because there were hideous amounts of gnats at the base of the climb and secondarily because we were 'saving our energy' for the 8 hour climb ahead of us.

After sweating copiously on the rock climbing hill we drove down to the resorty area surrounding the most climbed mountain in the world and pounded down some ramen, and not the little cup-noodle type either, big fat greasy ramen from a restaurant. Following this gustatory masochism, we spent the better part of the next hour trying to find the entrance to one of the 4 Fuji trails. The hike up Fuji is broken up by "stations" 1-9 with most hikes actually starting at the 5th station, and since there are 4 routes up Fuji, there are 4 5th stations. We started at one about 2000 meters up the side of the 3700 meter volcano. This meant that we had a little more than a mile to go, straight up that is. Fuji is not so impressive for it's height, there are hundreds of peaks in North America that top it, but it's amazing because it's a giant mountain that sticks up out of seemingly nowhere.

Our general plan was to climb until sunrise, this being about 11:00pm. It sounds a little crazy but with the trail so well marked and travelled, it was a simple matter to follow it, even at night. We each had headlamps and there was a waning gibbous moon overhead so most of the time we were able to climb without help from the lamps. Things were fine, a slog to be sure, but more or less fine for much of the trip, until about 3000 meters when Jennifer started to feel a little dizzy and sick. Altitude sickness is a bitch and she puked about 3 times on the way up. I realize now that she probably should have stayed at one of the stations along the way and rested, but eventually the 4 of us made it to the top at about 4:45 in time for a sunrise that we never saw due to the cloudbank in the way. Damn. Coming down was pretty easy because the top of the mountain is actually a giant cinder cone and we were able to bound down the sandy trail in about 2.5 hours where the trip to the top had taken something like 6 hours. Overall, it's something that I'm glad to have done, and am not sorry to never do again. Check out the photos and you'll see what I mean.