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Sea of Trees to Summit Part 3: Climbing Mt. Fuji through Aokigahara Forest (青木ヶ原樹海)

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Here is the 2nd video (of 2) of our Aokigahara to Mt. Fuji hike:       (continuing from Part 2 of my write up of the trip...) We woke up, had our breakfast of champions... ...took a few pics of the 5th Station of the Fuji-Yoshida trail.. ...filled out a supposed-to-be- post -hike survey about why we refused to pay the for-now voluntary fee to allegedly 'Help keep Mt. Fuji clean" (the bathrooms are disgusting, so it sure as hell isn't being spent to hire people to clean them properly) in order to get a free bottled water, and we were on our way. Typical trail surface of the mountain.. . ... other than the areas where you are literally climbing over large rock y outcroppings and boulders , s uch as this:   Passing through and above the cloud layer...  Just a bit more of this wee little hill to climb...     As it approached the early evening, the moon paid us an early visit...

Sea of Trees to Summit Part 2: Climbing Mt. Fuji through Aokigahara Forest (青木ヶ原樹海)

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...and back into the heart of the forest we dove:    And found holes...BIG holes. In this area (south east of road 71/northwest quadrant of Mt. Fuji's base) there were several large caves and holes, seemingly in much more abundance than near the Lava & ice caves. Whatever this root curled around obviously came out the loser in what was likely a years-long fight for survival...    Based on the shape, I think this should be called Jabba the Cave. This is connected to a 2~3 km long cave.    Some creepyness here. I wonder who and why(??!?) did someone (...or some thing ?) feel the urge/need to look for several softball-sized rocks and pile them up like this... ...and I hope this lonesome hat we found on the trail was dropped by accident, not because the owner had no use for it (and life in general) anymore. Either way, we left it where it was...  After having gotten off the trail earlier in the day, it was good to know we w

Sea of Trees to Summit Part 1: Climbing Mt. Fuji through Aokigahara Forest (青木ヶ原樹海)

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Having done a Sea-to-Summit climb on Mt. Fuji in 2015:  ... m y bro and hiking partner  (Be sure to follow him here:  Frame of Travel and here  Frame of Travel on Instagram ) came up with the idea for 2016's Mt. Fuji climb to start from a "sea" of a different sort . Instead of starting with our bare feet in the P acific ocean like we did in 2015 , we would start from the "Sea of Trees" ( 'Juk ai ' 樹海 ) of Aokigahara (青木ヶ原)  forest lying at the North w est sector of the base of Mount Fu ji. Challenge accepted! Judging by the lack of videos, blog posts, web pages, etc. documenting a similar route, it would seem that my video (1st of 2) of our trip: ....and this blog post are the first to attempt to document climbing Mt. Fuji with Aokigahara AKA 'The suicide forest' a s the starting point. From having done this a few times now , I have learned that it is rather difficult for me to hike and take decent video/give running commen