Homeless But Not Hopeless: 18/09/2014 and 19/09/2014 - Climbing to the Summit of Mount Fuji

The top station @ 3740 meters

In the previous post I mentioned I cycled to the fifth station on the Subaru line from Fujiyoshida; so at this point I was pretty well exhausted but this was no excuse to not climb up to the top of Mount Fuji.
Arriving before nightfall I met a bunch of other western tourists with the same idea as myself to climb to the summit.
It was now 3 days after the official closure of the hiking season but as it was yet to become a snowcapped mountain so there was no reason why I, and the others shouldn't climb it.
Jenny Silvio Mike Evan and Amil from England, the US, Canada, Canada and Denmark respectively and myself had to kill several hours before hiking because there was no reason why we should reach the summit before sunrise only to freeze our asses off waiting for the warmth of the sun to take off the edge, so we planned accordingly setting off from the 5th station at 2215. The sun was due to set at 0530 so that gave us plenty of time (with many breaks) to reach the top.
Even at the 5th station it was cold, very cold; with no shops open to hang around in and warm up we had to make do with the toilet block that was heated. In most places in the world this wouldn't be an option due to hygiene but the Japanese do incredibly well with there cleanliness and the toilet block was better than huddling in the freezing cold.
Roughly 5 hours we spent in the toilet block where some of us rested and prepared for the hike with a few games of the card game 'shithead' were played to pass the time.
Some late night hikers would come into the toilet and see a dozen western people blocking up the doorway with dumbfounded and perhaps disgusted looks on their faces questioning why they were there.
At one point a couple from Singapore but Italian and Chinese mix with their 5yo daughter came into the toilet seeking help as they had no transport to get down the mountain, there was nothing we could help them out with other than offer a sleeping bag to the little girl who was ruined from the hike, apparently she made it to the 9th station (one away from reaching the summit), which as it turns out was very impressive for a 5 year old but due to no transportation they were stuck there till the morning.

Ok, so the hike. It was dark and cold, but only got colder the higher we climbed, not only this but the American guy, Silvio did a lot of what Americans do best and that is complain.
The main thing to remember about layering up clothing is not to sweat as this is going to make regulating your body temperature difficult especially at these altitudes where damp clothing will freeze solid from a gust of wind - this was Silvio's issue.
The summit for Mt Fuji reaches up to 3776m so that meant just under 1400 meters of vertical accent.
It's interesting that I have climbed to much higher than this in South America yet I certainly found this hike to be extremely difficult, the last 300meters to the top I was dragging my feet.
Because the mountain had officially closed nothing was available at any of the stations on the way up, they had all been boarded up. However as climbing Mount Fuji is a very popular tourist attraction this meant that not many people were about we only ran into a handful of people including a very old man who was ill equipped for the hike and did not even have a flashlight?! Crazy, but thankfully for him I had a spare light from my bike that he graciously took off my hands.

Reaching the summit was bone chilling, the sunrise was good but the view was spectacular, well above any... Well, it's the highest point in Japan, so what do you expect.
We obviously didn't stick around very long due to the risk of freezing to death so after a photo-shoot we made our way down... the wrong way!
There are four ways up the mountain and we started taking the wrong way down, thankfully not too far but having to turn around and ascend once again broke everyone's moral and spirit.
The apparent 3 hour hike down back to the correct 5th station took us over 4 hours and I was extremely relieved that my bicycle that I had left there was waiting for me to descend back to Fujiyoshida.
At this point whilst buckling at the knees with severe sleep deprivation I said my farewells to the others and hopped on my bike to go back down to the town at the base of the Mount Fuji.