2024 Hiking Mount Fuji in the OFF-SEASON (early May) 🇯🇵

00:13 Info & directions to the Mt Fuji hike
01:48 Bus trip from Tokyo
02:09 The night before the hike
02:22 The day of the hike
02:38 Arriving at 5th station
02:53 The Hike begins
03:56 Crampons & Ice axe from the 8.5th station
04:01 Reaching the crater
04:27 Reaching the summit - 3776m
04:43 Beginning the descent
04:58 Sliding down Fuji
05:31 Back at 5th station - the hike is over
06:03 Goodbye, Fuji-san
06:18 Post-mortem thoughts
07:03 Extra - The Genius Hikers
A beautiful adventure up Japan's - and one of the world's - most iconic mountains during the off-season (early May).
Enjoy the journey, and feel free to reach out if you have questions.
Shoutout to the "Climbing Mt.Fuji" group ( / 85376899839 ) for all the info and helping find climbing partners, and David Niehoff from Kanto for leading us up.

[@glendonkeh1465]

The guys at the end of the video don't look like they have a guide 😮. Is a guide mandatory?

[@jdtravelninja]

Good point. Honestly, its a bit of a grey area - I heard from multiple sources that there is often police at the bottom of the road that leads to the 5th station, stopping people (even guides, occasionally) from driving on, yet this likely happens only during the key hours when bullet climbers would approach Fuji for a day-hike (eg ~7am-2pm). It seems like cars are free to visit the 5th station in the afternoon, as they're seen as "tourists" who go check out the station/get close to Fuji/take pictures with Fuji signs rather than actually hike it (highly doubt the guys at the end did anything more than a 30min stroll up the mountain before realising it was a mad idea). On May 4th when we hiked it, we must have met a total of 10-15 people throughout the entire day, almost exclusively individual or coupled Japanese fellas hiking up with their skis/snowboards. No foreigners, no other guides etc. I did see someone's post on Facebook about them hiking solo in early May, so I guess its certainly doable.