Visiting That Temple I Saw From The Bullet Train Last Week

Panasonic LX100 at an effective 72mm — 1/640 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 —
map & image data — nearby photos

The Day's Riding Partners

Hatano-san, Okabe-san, Yano-san

In my previous post about a visit to Tokyo last weekend, I mentioned that
on the bullet-train ride there I'd passed by a mountain with a temple nestled at the top, and thought it might be nice to
investigate the presumably steep road up there. It turns out that it was.

The mountain in question is one of a pair of monadnocks in an area that's otherwise flat as a pancake. Here's the view from
Google Earth (with elevation exaggerated for effect):

Google Earth view

The taller of the two rises about 350m (1,165') above the surrounding plain, which isn't all that tall, but
at least on the map the roads looked to be “interesting”. So, I made a plan to investigate some of the roads on them. It turns out that a couple of friends could join me, so we made a plan to meet yesterday morning on the other side of
Lake Biwa, nearer to the mountains.

On the way there, I passed by the entrance to a short but steep side road up to a mountain-top golf course. I had done the 1.1km @ 11% climb only once before, and hadn't planned on doing it on this
ride except that I'd lost the KOM (“King of the Mountain” — the fastest registered attempt) when someone rode it faster the
previous day, so why not? I tried it again and regained my KOM. It's a hollow crown, though, because, inexplicably, only two other
folks have ever attempted it.