Japan Adventure: Fuji and Hakone

Mount Fuji is about a 4 hour drive from Utsunomiya. Our adventure began early Thursday morning as we headed out on the road following another OAP family, the Riggsby family. Our plan was for Chris, Lucy (a college friend visiting us for the week) and I to hike Thursday night while Joe and Jodi Riggsby watched our children and then Friday they would hike and we would watch their children. We were excited about the hike and so happy to have another family willing to make it work.
It is said that the best way to hike Fuji is to start late afternoon, hike about 3 hours, stop for the night at a hut, wake up around midnight to hike to the summit to see the sunrise. This sunrise photo was not taken by us, this was what we had hoped to experience. However, we encountered horrible weather conditions that prohibited us from reaching the top. It was incredibly disappointing and yet still an interesting experience, one I will never forget. This photo was taken by Joe and Jodi Riggsby who hiked the night after us. They were lucky!

Our car following the Riggsbys to Fuji, here we go!!!!

After getting Rylee and Avery settled in at the cabin with the Riggsbys, we drove to station 5 to begin our hike up Fuji-san. We began around 4:30pm.

We arrived at the hut around 7:00pm, our hut was at station 7. The weather conditions were beautiful and we had high hopes for reaching station 10 my 4:30am. We were welcomed to the hut with hot green tea.

Curry and rice for dinner.

Snuggled in our bunk around 8:00pm in hopes of getting 4 hours of rest before we headed out for the summit.

We woke at midnight to rain and the temperatures had dropped considerably. We decided to go on ahead in the rain and hope it would stop soon.

Unfortunately the rain continued, the winds picked up and the temperature had dropped so much that the rain had become sleeting ice. We were tired, wet, cold and everyone was turning back. We reached station 8.5 and decided to turn back too. Coming down the mountain was by far worse then going up. Chris fell once and Lucy fell twice. The rain was coming dowan so hard my underwear was filling up with water. And my two big toes were killing me with each step as I jammed them into my slick wet shoes (it's nearly two months later and my toe nails are still black and blue, good thing for polish! I just hope they don't fall off.)
We made it back to our car around 7am and we were exhausted. But no nap for us, after grabbing breakfast at a restaurant we headed to the cabin for a fun filled day playing with 5 energetic children.