Officially, Fuji-san (or Fuji-yama) can be climbed during 2 months, from the 1st of July to the 31st of August. During this period, more than 180'000 persons are reaching the summit at 3778 meters.

Joanna and Nath's Climb - August 2004

To confirm that not always nice weather is encounterede on the Fuji-san... And to start, picture taken from the top! Note the shadow of the mountain on the clouds...

Some pictures from the early morning... seems it was rather cold.

Our Climb - September 2001

We decided to go there in September, since less people would be encountered. Definitely, this was the easiest part of the trip... Although we had to "sleep" 2 hours in the car before being allowed to start the climbing, at about 2.30 am!

At the beginning, everything proceeded smoothly. Since we hadn't any altimeter, we always though that we were higher than the actual real altitude, and therefore that the summit wasn't so far away. Big mistake...

Normally, you are supposed to see the sun rising from the summit. But since we started the climbing quite late, we had to watch it from the slope. The view on the lakes and the see is however magnificent.

At this stage, it really became hard! At least for me... After a couple of hours, you notice that you can't see the summit. In fact, I wondered if I just would see it at all that day. We had breakfast (bread, cheese and salami), made some breaks (first every 30 minutes, then every 5 !) and hoped that there would not be too much snow at the top.

Lonely Planet wrote "4.5 hours to reach the summit". I needed 5, which is really a shame. But at least we all arrived there. And we had a glass of good wine, by the way (in fact, I couldn't drink anything and I went straight down - but no need to insist on that)...