Seoraksan National Park

Yesterday (Saturday October 24th) I hiked what may have been the most difficult hike of my life. Now, that's not saying much considering I am not, nor have I ever been, much of a hiker so my repertoire of hikes is not long. Of those that I have done, however, this hike kicked it 10-fold.

Let me start from the beginning:

The hike was organized by a Korean man named Warren who has a Facebook hiking group and takes anyone who wants to hike (though mostly foreigners) on trips throughout Korea. The trip cost me about w35,000 which included a chartered bus to and from Seoul (Yongsan Station) and admission into the park.

I met the group at 11:30pm in Seoul. I got to the bus at the nick of time and still lucked out on a window seat. :) I sat next to a girl named Lisella who is from South Africa. In the seat across the isle were 2 other girls from South Africa as well. As I mentioned before, there are lots of people from South Africa teaching English here. It makes me want to learn more about the country because truth be told, even though one of my best college friends is from South Africa, I still know very little about the current state of the country.

But I digress.

The ride to Seoraksan National Park was about 3.5 hours depending on traffic, but since it was the middle of the night we got there a bit early. It was about 3:15am when we arrived. I took a 1-hour nap before I left for the subway to Seoul and got a terrible 2 hours of sleep on the bus. So I was running on about 3 hours of not so adequate sleep.

We hiked from 3:30am with a goal of hitting a certain point in order to see the sunrise. It was a great plan but it went awry. There were about 40 people hiking in this group (more than normal, I believe) and it was hard for the group leader, Warren, to keep track of everyone. He should have stopped at the sunrise overlook spot, but he didn't. He just kept on walking. And so we all just kept on walking. We ended up walking waaaaaay further than we needed to. And it was hard. Really, really hard. Each step up was a stair made of rock and it was ridiculously steep. Many times I was bent over on my hands practically crawling my way up the mountain. And this went on for 2.5 hours until 6am when the sun came up.

Well, since we were past the Sunrise Point we didn't get to literally see the sunrise come up, but it was cloudy and foggy and we wouldn't have seen the sunrise regardless. Instead my hiking group and I propped ourself up onto a rock that over looked the valley and took the views in for a long time.

Let me take a second to explain my hiking group. As I mentioned before there were 40 people in the group all together. So we all branched out into smaller groups of about 5. I ended up joining up with 2 sets of couples who knew each other because they all teach at the same private school. That made 5. Before we even entered the gates to Seoraksan I started talking to this other couple from the Missouri that were not in a group yet. I told them to join ours and so they did. My hiking group was perfect for me. They were all around my age and all my same hiking ability. Actually, I was surprisingly one of the better hikers of the group! Who'd have thought?! They were all fans of taking it slow and steady with lots of breaks to rest and sip some water. They were all smart, well-educated, and very friendly. Just completely perfect for me. Sometimes I felt like a fish out of water as I was hiking with 3 married couples and but they were all understanding of me and my situation.

Ok, so back to the hike:

Here I am at the peak of the mountain. Some people hiked all the way around to those far ridges, but we decided not to. A fine choice.

After a breakfast break it was time to head back down the mountain. It was a little tough on the knees and I rolled my ankles more times than I dare count, but it was much easier to descend the mountain. The other nice thing about the descent was that it was daytime and whereas we started the hike in the dark with nothing more to see than the extent of our flashlights, the daylight proved to have breathtakingly stunning views. We couldn't help but smile at the splendor of the Autumn leaves and the sheer cliffs around us.

The Descent

The leaves in all its full glory!

Here I am amongst the pretty leaves.

These are the rocks we had to climb up.

View from mid-mountain across the valley

Obscured by Leaves

Try as I may, my camera can not demonstrate how stunning the view really was.

Finally we made it back down to the base of the mountain. I had heard that Koreans like to hike but I was not prepared for how many people there really were. And I guess that as the day goes on more and more people show up. We were lucky to have hiked in the wee hours of the morning when the trails were less packed.

Later on it looked like this:

Back at the base were saw many things that were hidden by the darkness of night.

Here I am with my hiking partner Leslie

Finally we made it to the very start of the park. In the dark we could see the buddha but had no idea it was so massively cool.

Just to show a little perspective. Buddha in front, and the mountain we climbed in the background at the left. There is Cynthia in the front, another one of my hiking partners. The dude in purple was also on the bus with us, but he didn't hike in my group.

Huzzah!

Finally, at about 11pm Saturday evening I was back in my apartment in Suwon. After a much-needed shower, I fell asleep and slept soundly for 10 hours straight. And then again for 2 more hours after that. :)