Japans highest Mountain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Fuji
What a nice hike. The view was nearly a bit like Chimborazo as there is no other mountain near with similar hight (nr. 35 of mountains sorted by prominence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_peaks_by_prominence)
Got up at 3am in the morning – taxi to the trailhead at 3:30 – starting hiking at 3:54. At the top at 9:24 … yeah. 5:30 hours (including all breaks) instead of the 7 to 10 hours as sources on the internet state.
Nice sunrise at like 5am (had to buy a headlight the day before as I started at 4am).
I took the Gotemba trail – the longest one (2336m difference in altitude! I’m quite proud of my performance with 5:30!) – as I heard that the standard route means that you need to queue up – soooo many people (and slow ones – Again I have seen many people who should NOT be on that mountain).
http://wikitravel.org/en/Mount_Fuji#Gotembaguchi_route
Didn’t have that issue on the Gotemba route. But there were so many people on this mountain as I never have seen before (mainly near the top where the huts are – coming down when I was going up – or coming up when I went down). If you want to avoid the crowd – take my 1 day route Gotemba up – Subashiri down – otherwise be prepared to wait! I was back at the hotel by 2pm 🙂
There was a POST OFFICE on top! lol
The hotel was so kind to let me use their Japanese bath again. Used that the day before – 42°C water – similar effect than a good sauna! That was so good for my bones! And of course for all the other guests in the bus to Tokyo I took an hour later !!!
And such a clean mountain – no trash whatsoever (so different than Guatemala). But I learned later that hasn’t always been the case.
I again realized I prefer such a really amazing hike much more than visiting 100 temples 🙂
