Second Annual Fuji Climb

First of all, my apologies for ignoring the blog. What can I say - I've been spending my time knitting. Hopefully this massive Fuji post will make up for it.

As the saying says, "A wise man climbs Fuji once. A fool climbs it twice." I guess that makes it official - we have officially joined the fools club. We have been planning this second ascent for a while now - it is good practice dealing with altitude issues, and Michael wanted a chance to take more pictures. As luck would have it, several friends of ours wanted to do the climb as well so we had a nice little group.

View of Fuji from Station 5.

On the way up.

Each hut along the way has its own brand.
We got a wooden stick to collect each brand along the way.

We had great weather and were treated to magnificent views of the valley.

Once again, this year we climbed up during the afternoon and took a break/slept at Station 8.

We woke up at 1:30 AM to start the final ascent to the summit.
View from Station 8.

Summit - just as the sun started to rise.

The original plan was to hike the crater after sunrise - but that didn't sound like such a good idea once we were actually up there and miserable with altitude sickness.
We did walk over to the crater and take a look, though.

There was still quite a bit of snow at the top. Last year there wasn't any snow left, but we also made the climb about six weeks later in the summer.

On the way down we were able to watch as this cloud formed out over the valley - it was pretty impressive, and changed very quickly.

Boy - our group doesn't look too inspiring in this picture -
the walk down seemed a lot longer the second time around.

The good news we all survived (fools or not). I guess the big question is - are we up for it again next year, and if so, does that make us crazy?