Made it to the top on Wednesday and back at sea level now.

Turns out there were hardly any people on the mountain the day we went up. The weather was pretty good and we had fine views the whole way up to the old 8th station. Probably passed about 20 people total despite my measured pace, and no one passed us.

We left at 10am, upper 8th at 1:30, dropped our bags and went for the summit at 2pm, arriving around 3pm. Huge wind and low visibility made going around the crater a bad idea, so we headed back down to our hut at the upper 8th. The next morning was typhoon-like conditions and everyone who planned to summit gave up on the idea and headed back down.

We were told it would take 3hrs to go down from our hut, but our college-age boys made it down to the 5th in 70 minutes. I got there in just under 2hrs.

I doubt I saw more than 100 people over the two days. The Subashiri trail we did is quite pretty for the first half, wandering through a forest and for most of the time we were totally alone.

Apparently, our hut (Kame Edoya) holds around 240, but due to Covid is limited to 120. The night we stayed they said 70 were staying, but to my eyes it looked more like 40.

In retrospect, we might have been better off going up and down in a single day, which would have been possible had we started around 7am instead of 10am.

Sleeping in the hut at 3200m was not that comfortable and the food really basic. Part of the discomfort was a slight headache, part due to the hard bed and cramped space.

We ended up not buying any of the water. We carried 8 liters between the 4 of us and that was sufficient.