I finally met my goal of hiking Mt. Fuji, and brought Tom and Drew along. It was a dark, stormy morning...We arrived at the path at 0500 and it didn't start out too tough. We had purchased our hiking sticks and bottles of oxygen at the general store and were ready to go.

We had hiked all the paths you see below to get to this first station, which is really the 6th station because the starting point is considerd station 5. We were now in the clouds and the sun had strarted to come up. At this point I was wondering why I ever wanted to do this in the first place...Are we there yet??

The path went from smooth to rocky, and we were actually 'rock climbing' on a steep slope. Drew was always in the lead. Good thing we had our trusty hiking sticks with us. You can stop at each station and have your stick stamped with a branding iron, for a fee.

Here we are with a break in the rain. We had hiked above the rain clouds by this point. Notice the steep slope of the mountain, and the stamps on my hiking stick. Also, notice the Blue Steel pose Drew seemed to use for most of our pictures.

Tom was such a good sport the entire hike. He carried most of my supplies and had words of encouragement, like "keep breathing deeply so you don't barf". It was touching...
We finally reached the Torii gate at the top of the volcano. Whew! There are actually about 100 more steps required. I think it is false advertising but it gave me the hope I needed to carry on.
Once we reached the top, we had a short rest and a wonderful bowl of warm ramen noodles. I was anxious to see the crater of the volcano, but alas, it was too foggy to see anything and too dangerous to wander very close. As a wise girl once sang, it's all about the climb.

The hike down wasn't all we had hoped. All the way up I couldn't wait to head down, then on the difficult way down, up wasn't looking so bad. We again descended through the clouds on a gravely set of cut-backs that seemed to never end. We had a great time on our trip, and completed the hike in 10 hours. No one gave up, threw up or got lost, so we are marking it as a Freeman Family Success!!!