Since the hiking trails are officially closed we didn’t actually plan to climb Mt. Fuji.
As luck would have it we met Julian near Fujimi on his roadbike. He had climbed Fuji-san many times (along with countless other great mountains) and told us that it was the perfect time for climbing. Just the huts would be closed already, but climbing should be no problem at all, and the weather forecast was splendid. No wind!
He made me thinking – what a nice end of our tour! And so we changed our route.
From Kofu we took the train to Kawaguchiko, where we followed the Fuji Subaru Line by bike up to 2300m. Again we were lucky and one of the huts was open where we could enjoy a warm night and had enough water for the next day. Hence we were in good spirits when we got up at half past 3. Only during the first 40 minutes we were using our headlamps, and were soon greeted by the first rays of sunlight.
Even we haven’t seen it from the top, sunrise was terrific. The trail was fairly easy to climb too. But the air was getting thinner as we climbed higher and we were continously becoming slower until reaching the 3775m summit. The beautiful view and the great feeling was well worth the sore legs we got after a seemingless endless descent. (We never had sore muscles in the last 3 weeks, but nevertheless all it took was 8 hours of hiking…)

Thanks Julian for your convincing words!

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