Night on Fujisan and Accent to the Summit

We stopped for the night at about 10,800 feet, which was below the 8th station. There are larger accommodations at the 8th station, but for some reason we didn't stay there. The mountain hut, as they call them, did not beget the name hut. It was a fairly large building with an open first floor. There were low, traditional style tables where we ate. We got a hot dinner of curry rice and hamburg which was very welcome indeed.

The back and sides of the building were two floors of bunk beds. Sort of.

Behind the curtains were blankets and pillows, and your head rested just behind the curtains. I wouldn't call it private by any means, but with that many people sleeping next to each other it was certainly warm. I'm certain Yurika slept more than I did. We went to bed shortly after eating dinner as we were tired and there was nothing to do. I slept for a few hours, then woke up. The place was still busy until late into the evening, but not noisy. At 10 there were still groups coming in from the trail, and it's wild to think people climbed those rock faces with only headlamps. It's entirely possible but it seems a tad dangerous to me.  Surprisingly it was clear outside and I could see down onto the surrounding towns. I couldn't get a good photo because phone cameras aren't made for that sort of thing but it was really cool. It was also cold, but not bitterly so. One thing I noted during the expedition on the whole was how dead silent it was. After the 6th station there were no sounds except human noises, and when we stopped moving it was eerily silent. Without the hustle and bustle of the hut I'm sure the view that night would have been even more stunning. 

I realized the reason I couldn't sleep was because of the thin air. When you laid down to sleep it felt strange, not like a fish out of water, but some less severe form of the same idea. Many people were taking hits off personal oxygen canisters thought the night.  I fell back to sleep around midnight, and we were woken up at 1 by people getting ready to hike to the summit. Yurika and I got out of bed at about 1:45 thinking we were early for our group. For breakfast we had bento, or would have had bento.

The brown cylinders are thin fried tofu known as aburaage, something I'm particularly fond of, wrapped around rice. I'm not sure what was in the sushi rolls, and the can is green tea.  Anyways we didn't get to eat much of it because our group forgot about us. It was lucky Yurika checked with someone, and we had to put our food in out bags and join the group outside. They repeatedly tell you if you don't feel well not to try and reach the summit, especially because after about 15 minutes of hiking you're not supposed to go back down the trail. I had considered not going for it because I did poorly the past night and the hike the day before was difficult. But since I was all the way there and Yurika was going to try I figured I'd risk it. I was banking heavily on the oxygen canister I bought on the mountain hut. It wasn't a very long hike to the summit and it was much easier than the day before. It was slow because there were a ridiculous amount of people climbing, a veritable traffic jam. There was a chain of lights winding up the mountain, it looked like some sort of religious procession. Yurika had a hard time with this part of the trail, and we were both glad to have the extra oxygen. We got to the top shortly after 5 AM.

Summit Selfie

Unfortunately I don't have many pictures from the top and we didn't hike the crater rim. I didn't have a problem with the weather until we reached the summit. It was bitterly cold there, and that's why we didn't stay and there were few photos. A phone camera requires you to use bare fingers to activate the shutter, and after taking my two pair of gloves off for a few photos I decided it wasn't worth it. We'd stopped moving to, so we weren't staying warm. I'd never much worried about frostbite in my life, but here it seemed like a possibility. I had wool socks on, but they weren't thick wool socks and certainly not hiking socks. My toes started to hurt, then didn't really feel like much at all so I was thankful when we started moving down the mountain.

Sunrise on the summit of Mt. Fuji