Mount Fuji Part 3

The climb of Mt Fuji was rather spontaneous.. At 1045pm, we decided to climb it after gettin' inspired by our Aussie frens who did it the day before.. We arrived at 1230am at Stage 4, the maximum we could drive up to. Frankly, we were ill prepared in all ways. We didn't bring along thick clothing from Tokyo as we had read then that the weather was bad and not suitable for scaling Fuji until the season opens in July.. Our attire was minimal and made more for a night out in town than scaling snow-covered mountains.. We didn't bring much food either. Only 1 chocolate bar and 3 mini chocolate cakes.. Bad choice as the sub zero temperatures made us hungry easily and frequently.

As we had only thin clothing with us and 2 umbrellas as our walking sticks. All we could do was to improvise.. Fortunately we at least had our hats!

Marco used his face towel to cover his face from the howling winds and used his beach bermudas to keep his neck covered. Benny used his soft cotton bag to cover his head and neck and used socks as his gloves.. while i had plastic bags on as gloves, my face towel (held together by cable ties) keepin' my face and ears warm. Throughout the climb, it was moist and windy as we were in the midst of clouds all the time. Around 2300m up, we finally saw snow! It was our first time seeing snow and we were hyped up! but... slowly.. as we went along.. snow became our biggest obstacle..

Many routes were covered.. And we had to trek in snow.. worst of all.. our shoes were not made for this. Marco's and mine were jogging shoes while benny's were nike sneakers made for going to town. Thus, slipping and fallin' was not uncommon. The worst part of the climb was when we had to scale very steep slopes, probably up to 60 degrees steep. We were practically on our fours, hands holding the ice, most of the time as supporting structures like handles, chains and footpaths were covered in ice.. We couldn't reach them even if we dug into the ice. While trying to descent, Marco and i skied and fell quite a distance on the steep slopes during our 1st try.. We didn't know how to descent on snow! VERY VERY fortunately, we both managed to stop ourselves from accumulating more speed. Marco sustained some abrasions to his forearm while i was hit in the ribs when my umbrella broke when i tried to use it to control my descent. It got stuck in the ice, the handle broke off, hit my ribs and i skifell downwards for awhile. That gave me a shock. Wat if we had to keep fallin' all the way to make our descent?! That would be crazy.. Slowly, we experimented and found out that the best way to descent was on our butts and using our heels to dig in every step of the way. That technique worked.

Sometimes during the climb, i was thinkin' whether anything disatrous could occur as it could likely happen with such circumstances. There wasn't any other climbers too at that time so if anything were to happen, we were pretty much on our own. I'm sure these thoughts came to mind too for Ben and Marco. The 1 thing i learnt is that before doing dangerous trips, the minimum is to inform someone where we were going and our likely return date.


Well, we managed to see Mount Fuji's summit in all it's glory! Scenary was really breathtaking and we were wayyy above the clouds. So it was another Sea of Clouds view that we'd seen in Ermei-Shan. The air was crisp and cold.. And we could only rest for half to a minute at most as we lost body heat fast.

Midway between Stage 8 to 9, we had to make a difficult decision to turn back as the terrain was gettin' too dangerous. Snow was starting to melt as it was daybreak and deep inside, Ben and i were concerned about our possible avalanches.. unsure whether that could happen as we have zero snow trekking experience but we've seen that in Discovery Channel and the image sort of stuck in our minds.

Glad, we made it back down safely without sustaining much injuries. Both umbrellas, however did not.

Stuart