A wise man climbs Mt. Fuji Once
By: Bruno Basner
Sometimes random thoughts can seem foolish, but occasionally, a seemingly silly idea can lead to lifelong memories.
One such instance occurred on a random July day in Tokyo.
“Hey, we should climb Mt. Fuji.”
“WE SHOULD TOTALLY CLIMB MOUNT FUJI!”
Never mind the complete lack of hiking experience or the embarrassing lack of fitness among me and my friends in my GRIP program community—we had already made up our minds. Mt. Fuji was going to be climbed.
After buying our tickets to the base of the mountain, we navigated our way to the bus station in Tokyo with backpacks full of water, snacks, and Pocari Sweat (the Japanese, and far superior, version of Gatorade). We quickly realized we had no clue where the bus station was.
Our tickets had very vague instructions on where to find the bus stop. All they said was that the buses were located at the Shinjuku Train Station. Seems simple enough—only Shinjuku’s train station was MASSIVE.
We had given ourselves a 30-minute buffer to find the bus, and needless to say, we made it just 1 minute before departure. Perhaps this was a sign of the difficult journey ahead of us.
Our original plan was to “bullet climb” the mountain, meaning to ascend and descend in one go without booking an overnight hut. But as you’ll soon find out, plans often turn out to be overrated.
We traveled as a group of four: me, Ben, Jack, and Alex. Alex had bought a bus ticket later than us, which delayed the whole group’s start time. So, two hours later than originally planned, we began our ascent.
The mountain has several stops where you can sit, buy drinks and snacks, and pace yourself. The first portion of the climb actually went slightly downhill.
“I thought we were supposed to be climbing up, not down,” we exclaimed with great hubris—oh, what a mistake that would turn out to be.
Already tired after the first portion of the mountain, we faced the second, most grueling part of the climb—a seemingly endless zigzag of steep incline up to the next rest stop. Our lack of training was showing as we huffed and puffed up the mountain.
But slowly but surely, we were making progress. At this point, I could barely feel my legs. I checked the health app on my phone and saw that we had already climbed more than 300 flights of stairs. With the sun beginning to set, we realized that making it up and down the mountain in one night wasn’t feasible. We needed to find a hut with available space or we’d have to climb back down so close to the top.
Every hut we approached was fully booked. That is, until we reached the very last hut, which had exactly four spots left for us. Huzzah, we were saved! However, we wouldn’t have much time to rest, as we wanted to reach the peak by sunrise.
We woke up at 2:00 AM, tired, cold, but eager to finish what we had started. As we entered the final 1.5 hours of the climb, all our fatigue vanished. We were fueled by an unparalleled desire, and when we finally reached the peak, we were early—very early. In fact, we had to wait another 45 minutes for the sun to rise, and it was freezing cold at the summit.
As I lay on the summit wearing only my Penn Class of 26 quarter-zip, I thought about my time in Japan. All the friends I had made, the culture I had experienced—it all culminated in this moment: I had climbed Mt. Fuji.
When the sun eventually came up, it was just as beautiful as we had imagined. We had done it. Our crazy idea had become a reality.
As we made the much easier trek down the mountain, we approached the guards who checked climbers for their entry tickets.
“Climb Mt. Fuji again soon!” they said.
Jack replied, “Maybe in 5 years!”
A famous saying in Japan reads: “A wise man climbs Mt. Fuji once, only a fool climbs it twice.”
I don’t know if I will ever climb Mt. Fuji again in my life, but I’m sure I’ll never forget it.
The Global Research and Internship Program (GRIP) provides outstanding undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to intern or conduct research abroad for 8 to 12 weeks over the summer. Participants gain career-enhancing experience and global exposure that is essential in a global workforce.