First, thank you! Thank you for climbing the mountain and being awesome and taking all these pictures to share with us and sharing your experience here. I seriously can't stop looking at the photos. Our spaceship can be really beautiful sometimes, you know? Especially through the right person's lens...

It is hard to tell in the photographs how steep this thing actually is.

Yeah, I'm noticing that. Our sense of orientation must be a pretty big contributor to our perception of steepness. The pictures probably look a lot more level to me than they do to you, too, because you've been there! I have to kinda remind my brain that I am looking "up."

I was enjoying the cheerful bird songs coming from the pine forest on my right and everything was simply wonderful. I forgot about my nervousness from before.

This sounds like a wonderful feeling. I am very happy that you got to experience it. Just looking at the photos, reading your words, I know it must be an absolutely stunning place to be. I think I'd like to hike a mountain someday, too. Maybe I will even find a slug buddy of my own, who will probably beat me to the top :D