(no subject)
See, I can update in a timely manner.
After spending two weeks in Okinawa, Katie and I went up to Japan proper for another week before she had to go home. Since this wasn't a whole lot of time, we had one primary purpose in going: climb Fuji!
The usual way to climb the mountain is to take a bus to the 5th station, the traditional starting point, and go from there. We decided to take the Kawaguchiko trail up. It's known as one of the easier, if more crowded, routes to take, and our goal was to make the summit in time for sunrise. We totally bought the hiking sticks on which you can get burned seals at each of the stations, and I do not regret this. It is a sweet souvenir.
For all that we heard this route would be busy, it really wasn't at all. We also got incredibly lucky with the weather - it had been pouring rain at Fuji all week, and I'd known people who had attempted to make the climb but had to turn back. We arrived on the single gorgeous day there was. It started storming again the very next day. (Actually, we had this sort of luck in Okinawa, too - when we went south, it rained up north; when we went back up north, it rained down south. Possibly my sister is some sort of weather good luck charm.)
We made ridiculously good time. At one point we reached what we assumed was the 6th station, and congratulated ourselves on being halfway to our stopping point for the night.
We were mistaken. There is no 6th station on the Kawaguchiko trail, and we had made it to the 7th station in an hour and a half. We had booked space at one of the mountain huts here, to get dinner and a place to sleep for a few hours before making the pre-dawn hike, but we certainly hadn't expected to get there so early.
We slept from about 8-11 p.m. before heading on our way again. Now we ran into the crowds we had heard about - the number of massive tour groups was ridiculous. But again we had a good pace, passed most of the other people on the trail, and made it to the summit by 3:00 a.m. Now...to kill time. And freeze. (There is a reason climbing season only runs from July to August.)
The sun rose at about 4:30 a.m., and it really was beautiful. The summit was packed but we had a perfect viewing spot right at the edge. The celebrating as the sun emerged was an experience in itself - shouts of "bansai!" and so forth, and even a group of musicians who had made the entire climb with their drums and instruments. We met up with a group of people from our hostel.
After grabbing an early morning meal of noodles and getting our sunrise seals, we hiked around the crater and headed back down again with Carlos, Paulo, and Barbara. On the way down we planned to take the Gotemba trail - the least-taken route, one covered in rock and volcanic ash and with little by way of facilities or other people.
It was a long but awesome trip back, marked by long rocky "paths" we ran and leapt down, an absurd amount of ash and rock in our shoes, and mysterious signs to nowhere.
Halfway down, we entered...The Mist! It literally rolled in over us as we stood taking pictures, and once we were in the midst of it we couldn't see more than five or ten feet in any direction. Creeeeeeepy. We assumed this was the cloud level that we would break through eventually, but we never did. The rest of the journey was simultaneously disturbing and entertaining, as we plotted out the horror movie we'd apparently found ourselves in.
After surviving The Mist and passing through a few disaster areas that were apparently Gotemba's stations, we made it to the end! Fuji: conquered.
From here, Katie and I planned to spend our last few days having a much lower-key vacation in Nagano Prefecture. We spent two days at a ryokan in an onsen town in the mountains, visiting the onsen to relax after Fuji and taking chill bike rides around town.
We based out of Hakuba after this. On the way, we went to the Jigokudani Park to see the snow monkeys!
We visited old Olympic sites...
Made some more beautiful bike rides and hikes (the snow lifts in Hakuba still run in the summer, taking you up to mountain trails)...
And on our last night, made an awesome dinner with Megumi at our hostel, K's House (a chain of hostels throughout Japan I can't recommend enough; it was also our hostel at Fuji).
What isn't pictured - I think Katie has the CD - is the awesome half-day canyoning trip we went on with Evergreen. It was a blast, and we just managed to squeeze it into our vacation time. All in all, a fantastic three weeks with Katie.
Next update: the rest of my summer.
This entry was originally posted at http://emily.dreamwidth.org/117010.html. While I do get comments left here, I'm trying to keep everything in one place over there. You can comment at Dreamwidth with your LJ username (or other OpenID account) at http://emily.dreamwidth.org/117010.html?mode=reply. Thanks!
After spending two weeks in Okinawa, Katie and I went up to Japan proper for another week before she had to go home. Since this wasn't a whole lot of time, we had one primary purpose in going: climb Fuji!
The usual way to climb the mountain is to take a bus to the 5th station, the traditional starting point, and go from there. We decided to take the Kawaguchiko trail up. It's known as one of the easier, if more crowded, routes to take, and our goal was to make the summit in time for sunrise. We totally bought the hiking sticks on which you can get burned seals at each of the stations, and I do not regret this. It is a sweet souvenir.
For all that we heard this route would be busy, it really wasn't at all. We also got incredibly lucky with the weather - it had been pouring rain at Fuji all week, and I'd known people who had attempted to make the climb but had to turn back. We arrived on the single gorgeous day there was. It started storming again the very next day. (Actually, we had this sort of luck in Okinawa, too - when we went south, it rained up north; when we went back up north, it rained down south. Possibly my sister is some sort of weather good luck charm.)
We made ridiculously good time. At one point we reached what we assumed was the 6th station, and congratulated ourselves on being halfway to our stopping point for the night.
We were mistaken. There is no 6th station on the Kawaguchiko trail, and we had made it to the 7th station in an hour and a half. We had booked space at one of the mountain huts here, to get dinner and a place to sleep for a few hours before making the pre-dawn hike, but we certainly hadn't expected to get there so early.
We slept from about 8-11 p.m. before heading on our way again. Now we ran into the crowds we had heard about - the number of massive tour groups was ridiculous. But again we had a good pace, passed most of the other people on the trail, and made it to the summit by 3:00 a.m. Now...to kill time. And freeze. (There is a reason climbing season only runs from July to August.)
The sun rose at about 4:30 a.m., and it really was beautiful. The summit was packed but we had a perfect viewing spot right at the edge. The celebrating as the sun emerged was an experience in itself - shouts of "bansai!" and so forth, and even a group of musicians who had made the entire climb with their drums and instruments. We met up with a group of people from our hostel.
After grabbing an early morning meal of noodles and getting our sunrise seals, we hiked around the crater and headed back down again with Carlos, Paulo, and Barbara. On the way down we planned to take the Gotemba trail - the least-taken route, one covered in rock and volcanic ash and with little by way of facilities or other people.
It was a long but awesome trip back, marked by long rocky "paths" we ran and leapt down, an absurd amount of ash and rock in our shoes, and mysterious signs to nowhere.
Halfway down, we entered...The Mist! It literally rolled in over us as we stood taking pictures, and once we were in the midst of it we couldn't see more than five or ten feet in any direction. Creeeeeeepy. We assumed this was the cloud level that we would break through eventually, but we never did. The rest of the journey was simultaneously disturbing and entertaining, as we plotted out the horror movie we'd apparently found ourselves in.
After surviving The Mist and passing through a few disaster areas that were apparently Gotemba's stations, we made it to the end! Fuji: conquered.
From here, Katie and I planned to spend our last few days having a much lower-key vacation in Nagano Prefecture. We spent two days at a ryokan in an onsen town in the mountains, visiting the onsen to relax after Fuji and taking chill bike rides around town.
We based out of Hakuba after this. On the way, we went to the Jigokudani Park to see the snow monkeys!
We visited old Olympic sites...
Made some more beautiful bike rides and hikes (the snow lifts in Hakuba still run in the summer, taking you up to mountain trails)...
And on our last night, made an awesome dinner with Megumi at our hostel, K's House (a chain of hostels throughout Japan I can't recommend enough; it was also our hostel at Fuji).
What isn't pictured - I think Katie has the CD - is the awesome half-day canyoning trip we went on with Evergreen. It was a blast, and we just managed to squeeze it into our vacation time. All in all, a fantastic three weeks with Katie.
Next update: the rest of my summer.
This entry was originally posted at http://emily.dreamwidth.org/117010.html. While I do get comments left here, I'm trying to keep everything in one place over there. You can comment at Dreamwidth with your LJ username (or other OpenID account) at http://emily.dreamwidth.org/117010.html?mode=reply. Thanks!