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

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 rocky outcroppings and boulders, such 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...

  
Clouds rolled in in the evening, despite being well above the usual cloud layer...

Ironically, we...a U.S. Marine Corps vet (me...thus the "Devil Dog" part of this blog's name) and an Army vet team, found this hanging on the wall of the mountain hut we stayed at:




...and afterwards, I found the video of the team that signed it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4mGjGuWwSA


It pleased me to see that the USMC team didn't care about the shitty weather they experienced, sucked it up, and made it to the top, whereas the Army team... 😭

 However, after getting some sleep in the 8th Station mountain hut for about 7 hours, *our* Marine/Army team woke up around 12-ish, and joined the long line of climbers aiming to get to the top before sunrise. There were so many on the trail that we often had to wait for people to move higher up in order to continue. Despite the traffic, we made it with plenty of time to get ready to video (me) and photograph (Victor) the sunrise. Check out his much better/higher quality pics here at Frame of Travel






  After taking video of the sunrise and the above still pics, we gathered up our stuff to go find a place to crash for a couple hours before hiking back down. Around this time I managed to *again* drop my phone, but did not notice it till about 25-30 minutes later. I doubled back, asked at every shop and at the shrines if it had been turned in, but no luck.

Fortunately for me I was smart enough to add a "If you find this phone, e-mail me @" message to the lock screen the day I bought the phone, and the non-Japanese person that found it contacted me and sent it back to me C.O.D. so that it was back in my hands by Friday, 5 days after I lost it. Only in Japan. 


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