We climbed Mt. Fuji via Fujinomiya (富士宫) Trail on June 24th 2023.
The official climbing season on Mt. Fuji begins in early July each year. The official Mt. Fuji climbing website states that climbing outside the season is "prohibited", but a closer read shows that this is not a legal ban so much as a warning aimed at "climbers who are not fully prepared". When we visited in late June 2023, the parking lot was already quite full, and we encountered many hikers on the trail, most of them Japanese.
Out of the different trails to the summit, the Fujinomiya Trail is considered by many to be the shortest and easiest. While online data points of recent climbs were scarce, the webcam and satellite images suggested that the trail should be largely clear of snow. The weather forecast also looked okay, so we decided to give it a try.
We stayed at Yamanaka Lake (山中湖) the night before. The 5th station (五合目) of the Fujinomiya Trail is about 1 hour of easy driving away. We arrived at the parking lot at around noon. Being out of season, there weren't any parking restrictions.
The hike up was fine. Obviously from the 5th station at 2,400m to the summit at 3,776m, there is a lot of elevation gain. We just grit our teeth and pushed through. None of the shops or huts were open, but there were also no crowds, which was nice. It was a cloudy day, but the weather did not turn bad. It was a bit chilly closer to the summit, but not too bad - Claire put on a light down jacket, but I was fine with just a wind shirt. It took us about 5 hours to get to the top. The way down was much easier on the double track dirt trail. We were jogging and screeing down the moutain, and it took us about 2 hours to get back to the parking lot.
Overall, I feel that the Fujinomiya Trail is a moderate day hike, if the weather cooperates. Because of the clouds, we didn't get to see much scenery on the way up. But it's still fun, and it's nice to be able to say that we climbed Mt. Fuji, the highest mountain in Japan.
