Picking up from yesterday's Part 1 of “My Mt. Hiei Climb Challenge 2013”, where that post ended with a short pause at a clearing half way up...

From the clearing, the path up actually goes down sharply for a short while...

The trail goes up and down very steeply as it crosses several small river ravines, and this is where I worried that my knees would become debilitatingly painful. To my great relief it turned out fine, either because of the stretching I did (mentioned in Part 1), and/or because I was wearing a pair of knee compression straps that are said to help ease the kind of pain I had.

(A note to my mom: the knee straps are fairly bulky, which is why the self portrait in Part 1 showed me wearing very baggy jeans.)

I'll have to try the hike again without the straps, to test whether they were of material help.

The trail crosses several tiny streams like this, each entailing five minutes of very steep downhill, a hop across, and five minutes of very steep uphill.

This intersection of trails is where Stéphane stops for an energy snack (at least we did last year), so I did so as well, having one of my rice balls.

The other trail that joins here originates near the Shugakuin Imperial Villa, and is apparently The Trail for kids on school trips to use when hiking this mountain. I surmise this because starting from here I came across many junior-high kids before I got to the top....

There were many groups from many schools strung along the paths, totaling perhaps 500 kids. All 500, it seems, took the opportunity of my obvious foreignness to spit out a poorly-pronounced “Hello” in English. This may sound polite at first blush, but it's done with the same spirit as yelling “Moooo....” out the window as you pass a field with cows.

And just as with the cows, imagine how frozen with shock you'd be if a cow started mooing back, asking how you're doing, where you're from, and such. I got that kind of deer-in-the-headlights look whenever I responded in English. But mostly I just excused myself (in Japanese) as I passed. The kids, understandably, progress pretty slowly.

At one point I came across a photographer that had been asked to document the event for the kids, dressed in street clothes and lugging a large, hard camera case. It looked very uncomfortable...

Finally past the point of much laughing during last year's climb, I reached the tiny abandoned ski run, where groups of school kids were having their bento lunches...

A bit further and I got to つつじヶ丘, the hillside of Azaleas that was past its prime when I went last year, which is why I went a couple of weeks earlier this yet....

And finally I got to the rest/view area that was last year's destination...

I sat down to have another rice ball, and eventually was joined by Hiroshi (he of hat-saving mountain biking from Part 1), who had already been to the top and was pausing on the return trip before hitting the main descent.

I said I'd take his portrait, and when I pointed the camera his way I expecting to start directing him to a nice pose, but instead he suddenly made a tremendous leap...

That was impressive, but I spent the extra few seconds for a quick normal portrait...

He eventually went on his way down the mountain, but I intended to continue my own climb to the top.

Continued here...