Mt Fuji Take Two

I'm going to try to catch up on here as much as possible while I have a minute :)

My first hike up Fujisan was memorable, but not so fun.  I really wanted a good experience, so I convinced Bob to do it one more time with me.

Penelope and Tucker were not interested in doing it ever again, so it was just the two of us.  This time I also wanted to try the most popular trail up the mountain.  We had some map issues and ended up doing an extra hour of driving and starting an hour later than we wanted.  It wasn't a great start, but we were happy to be there.

It was honestly so nice to not be poured on the entire time.  Bob was really hot in his layers though.

We were so fast.  We passed everyone and shaved hours off the average times.  We hiked up in four hours, spent an hour at the top and then made it down in two hours.  It was awesome, to just go on a hike and be fast and not worry about the kids or anyone else.  

I will say that Bob was having some major knee pain that slowed us down.  If he knee wasn't hurting we could have easily been 30 minutes faster to the top.  It tightened up really bad and made things difficult for him.

I took a picture of some fellow hikers at one of the stations.  It was nice to see other hikers.

We made it!  This is the crater at the top.  We walked around the entire rim and then went up a few more feet to the highest part of the mountain.

I guess I didn't get pictures going down.  At first I was like, this is so fun.  Just dirt and gravel.  I pretty much ran down, while listening to an audio book.  And it was an easy running where I let gravity do all the work.  Then after about 30 minutes it started getting monotonous.  I timed it, so I know it was two hours, but it did feel much much longer.  It also started raining and hailing for much of the way down.  And I once again felt myself just wanted the whole thing to be done.  

We didn't have great weather on this day either, but our second hike was much better than the first.  We got rained on both times, but the wind on the first day is what made it so horrible.  If the chance presented itself I would hike it again, but I would try the longest trail, just to mix it up.