If you live in Japan or are visiting and want an English speaking guided summer ascent of Mount Fuji then please consider Fuji Yama Guides operated by two Japanese guys, Yuske and Shoji, who I got to know via the Japan Avalanche Network and their winter alpine guiding activities.

Fuji Yama Guides

On this outing I purposely tried to take a lot of pictures from beginning to end, which is quite out of character for me.

The biggest peak in the valley is called [Mount] Shirouma.  It doesn't look like a horse.  And compared to the peak on its left, it isn’t white except in winter.  But horse it is and white it still is in July, just.  Its a 1700m/5100ft climb and quite frankly I'm getting a little tired of doing it these days.  I am now able to ascend the 170m in 3.5 hours, which is fast.  However my lack of flexibility is causing my body to hurt more than it should.

Went out with my dog again, he's my only touring partner these days. 

Mid-June in Hakuba like most places requires  long sweaty approach.  We didn't have it any different.

Day 1:  skin up a long permanent snowfield for about 3km and 1200m vertical gain.  Then onto the summit of Hakuba's highest peak (Shirouma Dake, 2932m).  The line off the back was very patchy on top, so instead we continued to skin around to Asahi Dake and took that instead.

At the summit:

Views of my favourite series of couloirs in Hakuba.  Still holding snow, but a lot of rocks an deep runnels in there.

This guy:

Hakuba from the top:

And our new day 1 objective, Asahi Dake NE face (2867m).

Day 8

After a really good sleep I woke as usual at 5am and snoozed for a 7am breakfast.  We then took our time getting ready for a 10am departure and a long day of touring.  Today’s itinerary started with an easy ascent to a col between Big Man and Fanibawz, a long but bumpy decent to sea level, with good snow in a protected wave feature. 

The start of the descent down to sea level.

I poke around the cracks in the ice at the water's edge as the other take a close up look at this small iceberg.  We found what we guessed to be Arctic Fox prints in the snow.