The Yoshidaguchi Trail

When most people climb Mount Fuji, they don’t actually climb Mount Fuji.

Instead, they climb the top half, taking a bus to something poetically named “The Fuji Subaru Line 5th Station” (elevation 2,305 meters) and starting there. From that location, it’s only 5.8 kilometers of distance and 1400 meters of elevation gain to the 3706 meter peak of the Yoshida trail.

To me, that felt a bit like cheating.

So, when I was doing my research in planning my hike, I discovered something. It turns out there is a way to climb all of Mount Fuji:

What you do is you go to the bottom, and then you walk to the top.

Now, there are a few different ways to do this, depending on which base you want to start with.

If you’re truly hardcore, you can literally go to the town of Fuji and start at sea level. This is called the Sea to Summit hike, and depending on your level of fitness it can take between two to four days to complete. There is a map and brochure here, and there’s an entertaining video to watch.

However, the historic route, and also an easier one, is the Yoshidaguchi trail.

The Yoshidaguchi trail is 19 kilometers long from its base in Fujiyoshida City to its peak, rising 2856 meters from a base of 850 meters to a peak of 3706 meters. This is almost 3 kilometers of elevation gain, and just over twice the elevation gain of starting from the Fuji Subaru Line 5th Station and hiking to the top of the Yoshida trail. Furthermore, it’s 13 kilometers longer.

When you hike the Yoshidaguchi trail, you really have climbed Mount Fuji. You start in a town at one of the Fuji Five Lakes, looking at Mount Fuji in the distance. From a 7-11, you walk to a shrine, then through the forested lower portion of Mount Fuji, then past the treeline, continuing up the face of Mount Fuji until you are at a peak.

Note, however, that the peak of the Yoshidaguchi trail is not the summit of Mount Fuji. Mount Fuji is a volcano, with a number of peaks surrounding the crater; the 3776 meter summit of Mount Fuji is on the opposite side of the crater from the peak that you arrive at when you reach the peak of the Yoshidaguchi trail. If you want to hike to the summit, the highest peak of Mount Fuji, it is a two hour return hike around the crater from the peak of the Yoshidaguchi trail.

On August 15-16, 2018, I hiked the Yoshidaguchi trail of Mount Fuji.

I woke up in Tokyo just after 5 AM on the Wednesday, took trains to Mount Fuji station, got there at about 9 AM, went to the visitor center, got a map, took a cab a couple kilometers to 7-11, bought supplies, walked to a shrine, did the hike, took a bus and then trains back, and got back to Tokyo at 11 PM on the Thursday, and had delicious udon noodles and the best hot shower of my life.

I hiked the full Yoshidaguchi trail on the ascent. While I did reach the 3706 meter peak of the Yoshidaguchi trail, I did not reach the 3776 meter summit of Mount Fuji—I was short on daylight and on time, so I didn’t hike around the crater.

Due to the way that I timed my hike, I didn’t see the sunrise from the top of Mount Fuji. Heck, I haven’t seen anything from the top of Mount Fuji except the inside of a cloud! (The last good view I had from Mount Fuji was from 8th station, at 3020 meters.)

On the descent, I hiked down the descending Yoshida trail and then took the bus back from the Fuji Subaru Line 5th Station.

First, because I did it, and it was—and is—personally meaningful to me.

I’m pretty cynical, but I think this is something worth doing. I hope to convince you of the same thing.

There was something really special about standing on 8th station of Mount Fuji, in the wind and rain, and looking back at Fujiyoshida City in the distance, knowing that I started walking from there the day before.

Reaching the peak of the Yoshidaguchi trail, however, was truly inspiring.

It was gusting wind (65 km/h), raining, and there was almost no visibility—I could hardly see into the crater of Mount Fuji, let alone see any other mountains.

But I had done it.

Second, I hope to write something that is informative.

While lots of people climb Mount Fuji, there is almost no English-language material on hiking the full Yoshidaguchi trail. Also, while the material that I did find was helpful, it did have some issues. So, although I did a number of things well, I also made a few mistakes.

For example, one of the better short posts is here. This was one of the posts which motivated me to hike the full Yoshidaguchi trail, so I’m grateful to its author. However, that post tells you to walk up the paved road, and doesn’t mention the nature trail. Also, it’s more of a motivational piece than a detailed description, so I still needed to piece together the how-to information.

Now, someone else wrote a much more detailed post, which I found pretty helpful in terms of getting a sense of the specifics of the hike. However, it has two huge issues.

First, it advocates something completely idiotic called “moon bouncing” down Mount Fuji. This is possibly dangerous for other people below you, as you could cause loose rocks to slide. It’s also totally against the rules: you’re supposed to stay on the trails, and there are many English-language signs which tell you exactly that. Japan is very much a society in which the rules are followed—just see all the people standing at an intersection in Tokyo waiting for a light to change, even if there are absolutely no cars around. So, for tourists to just show up and do whatever the hell they want is disrespectful, and makes things worse for future visitors.

Second, the person who wrote that post was both younger and in way better shape than I was, and his pack looked a lot lighter, so the hiking times he posted were a lot faster than what I did.

At the time of my hike, I was a 42-year-old white Canadian male in average shape, who weighed about 210 pounds—and thus was at least 10 pounds overweight. Then, when you add in all the extra water and sports drinks I was carrying (see below), I was carrying at least 20 or 30 pounds more than I could have been!

So, if you’re in better shape than me, are carrying less weight in your pack, are doing the hike in better weather, and/or you take fewer pictures, you may be able to go (a lot) faster than me. In that case, I hope that my description of what I did serves as a useful overestimate of the duration of the hike, just as that other post may serve as a useful underestimate.

So, as far as planning the specifics, I made some mistakes. But I made up with determination what I lacked in planning, fitness or skill.

In short, by writing this, I hope to motivate, inform and entertain you a bit. I hope to give you a sense of what it’s like to hike the Yoshidaguchi trail up the highest mountain in Japan—and if you do it, I hope it helps you have a more enjoyable experience.

I’ve written a number of books. Over time, as I’ve gotten older, my books have gotten shorter and more focused. My first book, Flexible Rails, was almost 600 pages. This book is under 80 pages, and that includes a number of pictures. The simple reason for this is that it’s a travel book about one hike: it doesn’t get much more focused than that.

The photos in the book, including that on the cover, were all taken by me, on my iPhone, in 2018. In this book, the pictures are of places, not people (unless they’re selfies)—when I take pictures of people, I try to ask their permission first, but there’s a huge difference between “some tourist took my picture” and “now I’m in an ebook”. So, some of the angles are a bit wonky, or some of the crops are a bit weird, in order to crop out people who would be surprised to find their pictures in this book!

Where relevant, I’ll try to say what something cost, in Japanese yen (JPY). I will sometimes convert this price to what the US dollar (USD) was in 2018. I’m Canadian, but many more people have an intuitive sense of what a US dollar is worth than a Canadian dollar (CAD). In late summer 2018, 1 JPY was about 0.0090 USD, meaning that 1 USD was about 110 JPY.