Climbing Fuji, brb

“A wise person hikes Fuji once, but the person who hikes Fuji more than once is a fool.”

I apparently have a lot of wisdom now. Here’s what I learned:

Prepare, prepare, prepare

Being the former girl scout that I am, I already knew the value of being well prepared for any adventure, especially an outdoor one (in a foreign country, I might add.) Our group of thirteen Camp Adventure staff attended a safety briefing by the Outdoor Recreation center on base, rented high ankle hiking boots and gators, made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and bought an insane number of Gatorade bottles. We needed all of it. After our hike, we encountered a group of Camp A staff from another base in western Japan who were about to start the climb, and let’s just say I’m glad I was not in their shoes. Literally. They wore running shoes (one had brand new Nike shocks); most had cotton ankle socks and cotton t-shirts. As it turns out, they didn’t have an outdoor rec center to help them like we did, so they planned everything themselves. From now on, I will never be afraid to ask for help from experts, even for activities like hiking that I’ve done countless times before.

Adrenaline is more powerful than sleep

After a day of lifeguarding and teaching swim lessons, it was time for commissary shopping, showering, roommate’s birthday dinner, packing and schnack making. In bed at 23:30 (look at me and my military time!), up at 1:00 am to make it to the bus at outdoor rec by 1:30. Start hiking at 5:30, ascend at 10:30, off the mountain by 16:00, leave Fuji at 19:00, back to base by 22:30. In case you skipped over that, it basically translates to NO SLEEP. Still, I wasn’t physically tired or sore until nearly two days after the climb. Yay endorphins!

When someone tells you to buy a Fuji stick, just buy a Fuji stick

Before hiking Fuji, you have the option of purchasing a “Fuji stick,” a long wooden pole used to aid your climb up the mountain. As you ascend, you can stop at one of the many huts on the mountain to rest, buy food, and, for the lovely price of 200 yen each, get a stamp burned into your stick. It is the ambition of many a hiker to collect the unque stamps from every hut, which totals to a pretty penny in the end. I initially dismissed the stick as a cheap tourist ploy, and waivered for a while before finally deciding to buy one. Cheap tourist ploy? Hardly. 300 meters from the top, as I anchored the base of my stick on a rock above me and pulled myself up on pure brute force and the stability of the stick, I had never been more pleased with a $10 purchase (and that category includes a half ironman race registration and a river rafting trip!)

(Side note: I didn’t end up getting all the stamps, but I did get enough to make my stick look pretty cool. I took picutres of my stick in sections, and lacking any sort of photo editing program, could not stitch them together. Sorry, photographer friends. See below.)

  

I will never be the most hardcore person on earth

I finished a half ironman, I can climb a mountain. I finished a half ironman, I can climb a mountain. I relied on a ton of mantras and songs to get me through some of the more difficult aspects of the climb, and eventually I began to feel like a pretty legitimate, intense mountain climber . I finished a half ironman, I can climb a mountain. I finished a half ironman, I can…OH HEY OLD JAPANESE MAN. As I leaned exhaustedly on my stick, forcing my lungs to find some air at 12,000 feet, a skinny 60 year-old Japanese man RAN by me UP THE MOUNTAIN. Nothing lowers your self esteem like a man three times your age absolutely kicking your butt. And then having him and his friends run by you again on the way down through loose gravel six feet deep, while you slip and fall ever-so-gracefully on your bum.

There really is 1 vending machine for every 12 people in Japan.

There was one at the top of Mount Fuji.

Sometimes writing can’t capture an experience

Climbing Mount Fuji definitely ranks among the more physically demanding things I’ve done in my life. For all you Davis tri kids out there, it was like hiking up the steepest part of Mix, pretty much all the time. It took us, the first group of Camp A staff, 5 hours (with breaks) to climb 5 miles with an elevation gain from 7700 ft to 12,388 ft. I sweated gallons and gallons, yanked myself up rock faces with a skinny little stick, and fooled myself into thinking I still had oxygen. But I was happy the entire time. Reaching the top was a remarkable experience (despite the cloud cover), and I was with the best people possible. We remained relatively positive the entire way, stayed silly by calling ourselves “the wolfpack/the A team,” and relished in our peak fitness levels. I don’t know if I plan on becoming a fool, but if I ever return to Fuji, it will be to share it with new people, perhaps on a sunrise hike. And I will definitely have to wait until the route up the mountain is erased from my mind.