This post is a continuation, of sorts, of my first climb of Kyoto's Mt. Hiei, painfully documented a year ago in “Yesterday's Hike: The Agony Where Bravado Yields, In Spectacular Fashion, To Painful Reality”. After that horrible experience, I vowed to get into better shape, and to repeat the hike in a year.

That year had passed, so I repeated the hike last Thursday.

After the first hike, I made a concerted effort to get into shape, and just six week later I showed some of my progress in “Going Max Cliché While Learning About Off-Camera Flash”, and probably hit my peak in muscle-to-fat ratio six months later last autumn where I was essentially devoid of fat at 78kg/172lb, ridiculously lean for my 192cm/6'4" height. (But that lack of fat came with a gaunt face made me look sickly, so these days I'm looking much more healthy at 82kg/181lb).

Now, a year after the first hike and in my mid 40s, I have the best physique that I have ever had.

But in planning to repeat the hike this year, I was really apprehensive for two reasons: The biggest worry was my knees on the downhill parts, and I was also worried about my cardiovascular shape, which hadn't necessairly improved, so I worried about getting pooped out like I did last time.

Anyway, worries aside, I did the hike last Thursday. I started out from my place in eastern Kyoto at 9am sharp.

The top of the mountain is hours away, but if I reach it, this gate should be visible.

I was doing the hike by myself this time, so tried to do a self portrait in a window...

I've got to walk about an hour through the city before I get to the entrance to the hiking path, and at one point passed a small cemetery, which felt like some kind of reflection of my apprehensions. My destination is the peak in the far background showing between the roofs at left...

Closer to the trailhead, I stopped in a supermarket for supplies...

As the sign above says, the trailhead is near the Japan Baptist Hospital.

A few moments later, you see the hospital ahead, and the parking lot to the right. Enter the parking lot to the right...

Half a minute into the trail, you come to the small Oyamzumi Shrine (大山祇神社)...

Having gotten warmed up by the hour's walk, I spent 20 minutes here stretching my legs... quads, psoas major, the iliacus... in hopes of avoiding the downhill-slope knee pain that crippled me last time. The white bag on the path in the photo above has some towels, padding my knee while I stretched.

Kyoto is a valley surrounded by mountains on almost all sides, except for a slice to the south where the plane extends unbroken all the way to Osaka (which we'll see later in this series), and so you can hike the mountaintops in a big circle almost all the way around the city. The paths are dotted with markers like the one above, pointing the way to the next peak and/or trailhead.

I made it a point to check each one I came to to ensure I stayed on the right path. The problem in this case was that both directions lead to where I wanted to go, so I had to guess which one I'd taken last year (because I wanted to repeat the same hike). I chose straight ahead, and it turns out that was correct.

The trees are tall.

In playing with the sun peeking out from behind the trees, I ended up with this artsy version...

Lens flare can be a bit cheesy, but I like it sometimes (such as in this sunset shot). I'm not sure about the shot above, but I'll include it here anyway.

There's lots to see and experience in the mountains. I was listening to Seal on my iPhone while walking in the city toward the trailhead, but I put the music away when I got to the mountain, partially to allow myself to experience the nature, but mostly to allow myself to listen for snakes.

My worry about snakes (born here) was not unfounded, and I came across many at the lower elevations in the first half hour...

Even if I knew at the time that this snake was not poisonous, I would have still given it a wide berth. I don't like snakes. Or bugs, for that matter.

There are, of course, many sounds in the forest as well. Here's one that I heard a lot early on, though I could never find what made it:

I'd think it's a frog, but it has a creakiness to it that calls to mind a pigon. This particular recording (with my iPhone) was at the mouth of a hole that was spewing what looked to be eggs of some sort (likely frog eggs)...

Some of these paths date back thousands of years, so we have to remember that what seems like “middle of nowhere” to us now may well have been “middle of the highway” back then, so it's not surprising to find shrines and such along the way, especially here near Kyoto.

I was somewhat surprised to find a guy on a bicycle come up behind me, further surprised when he ask whether I had dropped my hat earlier on the trail and I realized that I had. He kindly offered to go back and get it for me, telling me to continue my hike and he'd catch up to me. Sure enough, a couple of minutes later, he appeared with my hat.

I would have been very bummed to have lost that Sunday Afternoons hat, both for when I would need its sun protection later on this hike, and in general for the future, because I use it a lot in the summers.

I gave him one of my Snickers candybars as thanks, and he headed off ahead of me...

The bike can make for great time in some situations, but in others it becomes a burden that slows you down, so I caught up and passed him on a very steep section with lots of step-like roots...

We repeated the back and forth a few times on the way up. Once after cresting a local hill, I waited off to the side for him to come flying by...

Another time I waited at the edge of the trail to try a more “actiony” shot....

By this time we had exchanged names (his is Hiroshi) and chatted a bit. He does this trip once a week, to stay in shape.

This was the last I saw of him for a couple of hours.

I eventually came to the clearing where Stéphane and I has paused last time...

I took the opportunity to pause this time as well, mostly to stretch the legs before hitting the next section of the trail, because it includes some very steep downhill sections.

In looking at the tracklogs from the two trips, I'm happy to see that I did this section of the trail at the same pace as last time, but unlike last time, felt just great at this point.

But my anxiety was running high, worried about my knees for the downhill sections. I was also starting to get a blister on one foot because I didn't have proper shoes. It's hard enough to get size 13½AA shoes in The States, much less here, so I was wearing some old beat-up (well-broken-in) street shoes that aren't intended for hiking.

Continued here...