Climbing Mt. Fuji

A bucket list achievement three years in the making.

Dear Jane,

My calves hate me, and I have blisters on my toes, but I made it to the summit of Mt. Fuji! I actually had the blisters on my toes prior to climbing Mt. Fuji, so I feel extra accomplished. You walk a lot in Tokyo, even with its expansive and superior transit system. I got the blisters from walking just over 10 miles per day the two days before I started my climb. I recommend planning things better than I did.

When I had originally planned my trip to Japan in late 2019/early 2020, I had far fewer funds and was going to do a completely solo bullet climb because a flight attendant I “met” on Facebook hyped me up. A bullet climb is when you go straight to the top without sleeping overnight in a mountain hut. This is kind of dangerous and can lead to altitude sickness (which I’ve totally had before when I summited a volcano a mere 61 meters shorter than Mt. Fuji in just 2 hours, and that was going from literal sea level to that height.) The flight attendant worked a flight from the West Coast US to Haneda Airport, then she and the flight crew jumped onto a train to Mt. Fuji. They climbed overnight, saw the sun rise from the summit, climbed down, jumped back on a train, and then were back to work. Yeah, I wouldn’t have to work, so I thought I could totally do this.

For the 2023 version of my trip, I went with a tour group, because I did want to sleep overnight in a mountain hut, and I recalled from my initial planning that making a reservation could be difficult, mainly from a language and availability perspective, but also what if I did something dumb like make a reservation in a hut on a trail I’m not even climbing? So I booked with Willer Express Co., who’s Mt. Fuji climbing tours start at half the cost of the other companies offering tours. I can’t compare them to the others for a did-I-get-what-I-paid-for moment, but I can tell you I’m mostly satisfied with my experience.

Willer has the option to book with or without a full gear rental. I went without, and then rented some gear a la carte directly from the gear rental shop: a headlamp and gators. The tour also provided dinner and breakfast at the mountain hut, as well as a bottle of water to get you up to the summit from the hut.

This company had mixed reviews for the tour, and it came down to tourists and guides having conflicting priorities. The guides are very much safety first, and tourists are photo fantasies first.

We had a tour conductor and two mountain guides. Our team was:

Tour Conductor Hiro: Avid surfer, snowboarder, and hiker. His role was to keep tabs on attendance and make sure everyone was at the right place at the right time. He picked us up in a bus from Shinjuku.

Mountain Guide Yama: Yama is short for Yamabushi, which is his nickname, but people find it hard to pronounce. Yamabushi means Mountain Monk. Yama is a mountain guide during climbing season, and during the off-season, he’s… a practicing monk based in Osaka! He guided us from the 5th Station to our hut on the 8th Station.

Mountain Guide Etsuko: She introduced herself as “Let’s Go Etsuko” because Etsuko ryhmes with “Let’s Go.” That’s not a nickname, but it should be. Etsuko has been a Mt. Fuji mountain guide for over 20 years, and stopped counting after 400 treks. She literally does them back to back. When we got back down from the mountain, she had to say a quick goodbye because she was about to go up with another group. During climbing season, Let’s Go Etsuko guides groups from the 8th Station to the summit, and in the off-season, she’s a freelance nurse for film and television.

Before we began our ascent, Yama and Etsuko stressed the importance of taking deep breaths and small steps. They set a pretty slow pace for us, but that was so we had the energy to make it up. The pace was a major complaint in reviews, but hey, it works. I’ll admit that I broke ranks because I was (am) a proud stamper. You can buy walking sticks and have stamps burned into them at each station and the summit. Yama and Etsuko regarded the stamps as a waste of time and energy, and I can say I only agree on the energy part. We stampers (basically all the Americans) were told to rush ahead of everyone to get our stamps. There can be a line for each stamp, but I didn’t find that to be an issue. So, while we were ahead of the tour, we did waste a lot of energy during our rushing.

It took 6.5 hours to get from the 5th Station to the 8th Station, and another 2 hours from there the following morning to reach the summit. The mountain hut was an experience in its own. We were set up in a futons-across-the-floor barracks style dormitory. It was cold, and you got to swap out of your sweaty clothes into dry, warm clothes in front of everyone. A great bonding experience for 8-hour old relationships. The bathrooms were outside and required a bit of climbing up and down to get to. They cost ¥200 to use, and there was no running water or soap. And to clarify, they are strictly toilet facilities. There are no showers on Fuji.

After dinner, which was mystery meat curry and rice, and using the facilities, our little group of stampers went around to the different huts at the 8th Station to get our stamps. We met a European man who wasn’t dressed in a parka, who wasn’t carrying anything, and who didn’t have a reservation at a hut. He said he had warm clothes and figured everything would work out. I thought he might bunk with us because we had extra space, but I don’t think the hut allowed double booking. Our tour had started as 37 participants, but a family had to drop out at the 7th Station. There was a grandpa, a dad, and a granddaughter (and a couple of other men Dad’s age), and one of them got sick. Yama and Etsuko had stressed to Dad that children were really susceptible to altitude sickness, and they thought she wasn’t going to make it. I thought, though, that Grandpa maybe got sick. He was really impressive. He and Granddaughter had a really cute relationship and seemed like BFFs. But from the onset, Grandpa was carrying a huge pack and had one hand full with a bag of full water bottles and Granddaughter’s hand in the other. Walking sticks and hiking poles were a necessity, so I don’t know how he was able to climb at all with that weight and full hands.

I don’t know what happened to the European guy, but I think it’s possible he just did a bullet climb. Moving would have been the best way to keep warm. When we exited the mountain hut at 3am, I was surprised to see that there were people in sleeping bags outside. It was very cold and very windy. The weather was good, though. We managed to avoid rain altogether.

We saw the sunrise from the 9th Station, which is a Torii gate and remnants for former mountain huts, because Yama and Etsuko said the summit is crowded and it’s too unpleasant to enjoy the sunrise. This is another sore spot in the reviews, but Willer is very upfront about how this isn’t a summit-sunrise tour. Seeing the sunrise from the 9th Station was perfect. We had a great unobstructed view and could lean against the mountain to take a rest.

At the summit, we only had 30 minutes before we had to descend. This is where I would agree with the negative reviews. I wish we’d had more time. There’s a lot going on up there: restaurants, a post-office (closed for the season when I went 🙁 ), stamps, and the crater.

Mt. Fuji is a volcano, and there’s an hour-long hike around the perimeter of the crater. There are 8 peaks on the crater, and each of them have a small altar and Buddha. Mt. Fuji is one of three holy mountains in Japan, and the trail I hiked is part of a pilgrimage. The pilgrimage itself is from the sea to the summit and the permiter of the summit.

I missed out on some stamps, and my walking stick isn’t complete. That being said, I don’t know if I would do this again. It was hard, and I want to look forward to new challenges (even if they are hard too.)

<3 Katherine

PS – I first learned about the Sea to Summit pilgrimage from an ex-pat named Victor. He’s written about his Sea to Summit hikes on his website and has a lot of great photos (he’s a photographer).

The same day I began my ascent, history was made on Mt. Fuji. A 90-year-old, wheelchair bound alpinist summitted Mt. Fuji. Read about it here.

PPS – On New Year’s Eve 2023, Victor declared that he failed to become a professional photographer after 6 years of trying and gave up. I’ve left a link to his website in case he realizes that he’s still really talented. In the meantime, here’s an article he wrote about hiking Sea to Summit.