Well, a change of plans! We ended up climbing Mt. Fuji yesterday and I survived (barely) to write about it! Accompanying us, the old foggies, was Justin Wiegand, Bethany Gerber, Essie Kauffman (daughter of Joel and Sally Kauffman who are missionaries here in Japan), and Caleb Klaus. Mt. Fuji is 3776m high and is an inactive volcano--so this means we were trudging up and down in loose lava rocks. It took we old foggies about 6 hours to get up to the top from the 5th station (you can drive half way up the mountain). The last two hours were the worst because I started getting nauseated and light-headed, so we just slowed down and took breaks every 15 minutes. Akihiro was very patient with my moaning and groaning and encouraged me on. It was very cloudy, but at least we could look over the top of many of the clouds and could see the crater. Then we headed down--almost 4 hours. Our new hiking boots and poles and hiking techniques were invaluable and my "Aberle knees" weren't hurting too badly by the end! There is a common statement about hiking Mt. Fuji--He who doesn't climb Mt.Fuji is a fool and he who does it second time is twice fool. I would partly agree with this, but Akihiro is bent on having me see the sunrise from the top. I guess I would be willing to be a fool again for him if we could stay in a little cabin part way up the mountain to adjust to the altititude and break up the trip a little bit. We'll see! We are walking pretty carefully and a few moans and groans were heard as we rolled out of bed this morning! We were very thankful for a safe trip and no rain!
The crater
We made it!
