Seoraksan

Hello hello

It's Day 121!

And the Hwacheon cold has gotten to me~ Despite wearing four layers a day (undershirt, long sleeve shirt, sweater, jacket) I got sick this last week. Airborne is worthless in Hwacheon!

Now... we have some unfinished business between us.

Which I think pairs perfectly with:

Prepare thyself

Now a little over three weeks ago, there was a lovely four day weekend due to Hangul Day 한글날, basically a holiday celebrating the day the Korean alphabet was created. Hangul totally deserves its own holiday! I really recommend learning hangul because it's the best alphabet ever. It makes much more sense than the Roman alphabet at least…

Alphabet prejudice aside, I used this wonderful four day weekend for a trip to the best mountain range in Korea (wow, I'm very opinionated today). It also has the tallest peak on the South Korean mainland (Jeju Island 재주도, a Korean island in the south has two taller peaks, and North Korea has much taller mountain ranges). I went to hike 설악산 Seoraksan!

We were super hikers. The hike up to the peak is supposed to take 4 hours, and we hiked it in three. The hike down (a different trail) is longer and more scenic and supposedly 7 hours, and we hiked it in 4.5 hours. All together we hiked about 16 kilometers in 7.5 hours. (We had to go that fast if we were to make the last bus to Hwacheon).

 scenic to the max

The hike up was mostly just stairs until you got high enough to walk along the ridge of the mountain range. Then it becomes nice and trail like. While I do not appreciate the lack of switch backs, I really enjoy the ridge trails in Korea. I think it's one of their specialties.

This is a rather extreme example, but I couldn't find any other photos that had the same feeling.

As we hiked up the mountain, there was this group of men who were a little faster than our pace, but they would take longer breaks at the rest stops, so we kept passing each other. After about the third pass, one of them handed us a water bottle full of a bright orange-y-pink color liquid. He said it was "five flavor tea" 오미자차 and made lots of encouraging drinking gestures. To be polite, I took a sip and then passed it to my hiking partners. They all took a sip and they we tried to hand it back to him, but he seemed surprised we drank so little and refused to take it back. They turned around and sped ahead of us.

The drink was a very sweet juice-like tea. Just taking a few sips already gave me a sugar-rush. We really zoomed up the mountain then, I think. Whenever we thought we might pass that same group of guys, we guzzled the tea, to make it look like we were drinking it more often then we were (afraid that if they saw us still carrying a practically full bottle they'd be offended). We thanked them each time they passed us, and they waved every time we passed them at a rest stop.

I think the tea really helped in that last half an hour of steps. It became pretty steep at the final stairs, but I had sugar power in my veins and flew through it.

By the time we got to the top, we were all pretty sweaty. I think I've sweat more these last months than I ever have before. Before I would still get sweaty, but just the sticky feeling, not the drops-of-sweat-falling-from-bangs-into-eyes kind of sweaty. It's kind of fun. I feel like I'm in an action movie when I get these sweat drops.

Also, since the weather was sunny and absolutely B. E. A. UTIFUL that day, I took off my middle layer and just wore my tank top at the ridge (and accompanying super tan from just 20 min or so). Since we weren't working as hard anymore (it was a pretty flat walk) I stopped producing buckets of sweat, and this amazing phenomenon happened: all my sweat evaporated! And all the salt from my sweat was left over. I've never seen this happen before! I could brush all this really really fine white dust off of my face. And while I couldn't see my own face, according to Leanndra and Deanna, it looked weird. Eventually it felt pretty uncomfortable, so I wiped it all off with wet wipes.

We took a nice break at the summit 대청봉 the highest point. And there was lots of people sitting around and eating/drinking. We ate some rice balls we bought earlier and caught our breath. And because we were a very noticeable trio of foreigners, some 아저씨 old man, shouted out to us if we wanted some "Korea water". It was obviously either soju or rice wine (in one of those bottles that screams I AM ALCOHOL). We kindly declined.

The view was amazing. The mountains were beautiful with fall colors. You could see the nearby city/town 속초 and East Sea (if you faced east) as well.

People picnicking and drinking lots of alcohol on the summit

 Us normal folk just took photos

 And more photos

And more photos

And enjoyed the sunshine

 This is the official summit rock. We decided to not take one of the "look! I climbed all the way up!" photos because...

Who wants to wait in line?

All around the mountain range we saw chipmunks. They were everywhere. I must've spotted at least 20 that day.

Now the hike down the mountain was my favorite. It was a very easy hike with lots of flat stretches. Almost the whole way was on a metal pathway, which I would normally be offended by, "how dare you ruin the natural beauty of nature!" I didn't care this time though… probably because I was completely distracted by the overwhelming beauty of the valleys we were walking through. Seriously. BEAUTY - like a drug. It was such an emotional high point, like winning the lottery. I was beyond my normal self. I was in Nirvana. If any person came up to me and asked me something I'd probably smile and say, "Sure!"

"Sign this form?" - "Sure! Have a nice day!"

"Give me your wallet." - "Sure! Enjoy the many coupon cards from random coffee shops."

"Marry me?" - "Sure! And can we enjoy this beautiful walk all lovey-dovey, arm-in-arm? Great! What's your name?"

"Join our radical movement?" - "Sure! I'll give a motivational speech with a loud speaker too!"

This is where fantasy worlds aspire to be. At some points I just knew, "Ah! This is where Rivendell would be." and there were many places with big white rocks along the river that looked just like all the final fight scenes in "The Fellowship of the Ring". These photos really only capture some of this beauty (so I will throw in some take by other people as well… shhh)

End of my photos. Now for beautiful edited ones.

The autumn foliage was also super distracting. Too beautiful.

At the base of the trail, once we power walked through all the slow groups and were happily ahead of schedule, there was a temple with a giant Buddha statue… and we just glanced at it. After spending almost 8 hours enveloped in the natural beauty of the mountains, well, that temple looked pretty ordinary to us. 

Thus ended our really wonderful day trip to Seoraksan. 

Now I'm only three weeks behind with this blog…

Eheh. Well honestly the last few weeks haven't been that exciting…

Okay. I promise to update you all more soon!

Bye~~

Gabbatha