Due to exhaustion, lack of trail signs and the momentum (both physical and mental) of descending mount fuji, I climbed mount fuji more than once... My collegue and I decided to start at the first station instead of the fifth station. We are two men who wanted to massage our egos by saying we took the long route. However, the long route takes you through the forest whereas the short route starts at about 5000 feet, which is at the tree line for fuji. So we got to see some beautifuly forested areas before the barren mountain scenery took over. At first we were really dusting the guide books suggested amount of time it takes to ascend the mountain. Sometimes we walked the numerous legs in about half the time, others shaving off about a third of the time suggested. But we realized we were taking the long route and by the time the altitude and exhaustion set in we would need the extra time. Indeed we did. So before we left the forested part of the climb night had set in. But we were confident and kept our pace. Then the rugged mountainous part slowly began to appear. By the time we hit 9000 feet both of us were tired but we still had enough energy. Then at about 10,000 feet I hit a wall. It took me two hours to go a distance I was covering in one hour. The altitude and exhaustion was huge. I had been climbing for seven hours and I know the sunrise would not wait for me so I kept going, taking many many breaks. Finally I reached the top at about 4:00am sunday morning after nine hours of climbing. It was thrilling to be able to sit down and watch dawn turn into daylight at just under 12,000 feet. The top is not all that exciting. It has a crater and that is about it. So with out much to do we decided to leave, knowing that a long descend and a three hour train ride back to kawagoe where in our future. So we were walking and walking and walking when we noticed that the seventh station did not look the same as the seventh station that we had seen when we climbed up the mountain. So we asked some people and sure enough we took a wrong trail. We looked up the mountain and saw the station that we needed to be at to transfer to the correct trail and gasped. We needed to backtrack about 90 minutes and 2000 feet (from about 7500-9500feet). Neither of us was in any shape to re-climb a portion of the mountain but if we didn't we would seriously jeopardise our ability to get back to kawagoe. So begrudgingly we backtracked, found the right trail and quickly left the mountian. So I climbed mount fuji and I will probably never, ever ever do it again because it is two days later and I still feel tired, sore, exhausted, dehydrated, bruised, blistered, and sunburned. rich
