Reasons to smile...

By Lauraiea

Today I Climbed Mount Fuji


I'm not ready to talk about it yet. Much harder than expected- I think we forgot it was a volcano and therefore covered in rocks, ash, dust etc- nothing substantial to help you up on down. And its steep. Incredibly steep all the way up. It's 3776m high and we climbed from fifth station- so up 1500m of that height. About five hours up, 30mins-1hr around the (amazing) crater, then about 3.5-4 hours down. All this from setting off around 4:15am and getting back to the hotel about 11pm tonight. Bloody hell.

Mindfulness was used a lot. It helped control my breathing when up high and also it was a really physically demanding trek. Lots of real climbing, using your arms to pull yourself up which was sore and was the long strides and climbing up the rocks. I got a little sick but breathed through it, also got a headache and did the thing where you become curious about the pain and it is much less of a threat. Coming down, I kept just focusing on one step then another and another and so on. It helped a lot.

I have never seen a volcano crater in real life. It was so impressive. I was scared being near it as you could easily fall over the flimsy rope, but I wanted to take in everything!

I'm proud of my two ladies managing this with me and us all for keeping each other going.

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