Hilary Meets the Land of the Morning Calm

Sasha and I made plans to meet up Sunday morning to climb Bukhansan mountain, which is in the North-East outskirts of Seoul city. It took me an hour and a half subway ride to get there, and I was not alone. Car after car, subway after subway became increasingly packed with middle-aged Koreans dressed head-to-toe in very professional (and colorful) hiking gear. It felt like I was at a volunteer photoshoot for some major hiking gear company like the Northface or EMS.



Unfortunately Sasha and I are still cellphone-less losers, and we both left late and missed our meeting time and never found each other. I waited an hour and decided to go hike on my own. Ten minutes later she arrived at the station and proceeded to wait for me two hours before giving up... (Payday is only two days away, so I'm getting a cellphone next weekend which will eradicate these kind of meeting problems...)

I followed the sea of Korean hikers (there were thousands of us) away from the subway station and toward the mountain. I was given an information map in English,
but ended up not really using it, as I was trying to get off the beaten path and away from the hordes of people. This impatience was the key reason that I nearly had roll my way back down the mountain out of exhaustion...

After my first hour of following paved paths, I noticed a cow path going up into the woods marked only by red markers. I could say a middle aged-man just disappearing out of site on it above me, so I followed, with the arrogant thought ('well if he can do it, surely I can do it too.') Ha. This path went STRAIGHT up, and only provided small ledges to rest at. This is a nice path, the ones I was following here much much more narrower and featured a cliff on a side.

It was on one of these rest I stumbled across three Koreans in their early 40s I'm guessing. Red-faced, huffing and puffing, I had surprised them taking a snack and water break on one of these small landings. They didn't speak any English and they quickly ascertained that I didn't speak any Korean either, but they invited me to join them for their snack. I showed them my English map and made gestures to ask where we were on it. They looked at the map for a while, and finally the guy started blabbering away, and I believe to have understood is that the map I had was for Bukhansan...and I was no longer on Bukhansan mountain... Doh! After they packed up, they motioned for me to follow them, onwards and upwards. I figured, since I was off the map, but not read to stop, I'd better follow these people. They ended up adopting me for the rest of the day...





And this was the beginning of the longest hike of my life. We went from peak to peak, me always following these agile climbers as they literally scampered up cliffs and boulders, always looking for the highest peak, and the best view. See those black dots? Those are rock climbers... we kept getting closer and closer to this cliff, and I was getting worried that they were going to scurry up that too!

After a few hours I was EXHAUSTED. I haven't had any opportunity to work out here, and during my last month in Canada/the States I wasn't able to work out half as much as I wanted to. After several hours hiking, my thigh muscles were spent, and difficult to control since they were shaking with fatigue. And we STILL weren't going down yet. We stopped for a good long lunch, and they shared their entire spread with me (even though I had brought a bit of food with me, though admittedly it was pretty measly compared to their meal!)
I tried to only take a few bites, but they kept offering things to me and motioning, and I it seemed like it would be more rude to refuse. I was shocked to see them (between 5 people including me) share two bottles of soju...

It seemed dangerous to me to drink any sort of alcohol when you'd be getting up in an hours time to continue hiking rocky ledges. But they took their time, and ate a lot and rested a while after, and for myself I didn't feel lightheaded at all. (After we picked up camp and past by other people having lunch I notice bottles of soju were present at almost every sitting).


Though lunch allowed me to rest my legs, they were still just as tired and hard to walk with. My Korean hikers kept urging me on though, even when we passed by a normal path (as opposed to the goat paths we'd been follow along ledges) probably telling me it was just a little bit further. I think this was the highest point that I took a video at: You could really see all of Seoul:

Finally we started descending, but that felt more precarious as my tired muscles made it difficult to navigate the loose gravel covering the sandy rocks.



We took it easy, and eventually, (FINALLY!) we returned to the touristy area with all the shops selling hiking gear, just before the subway station. The man in the group walked me all the way to the subway station, and we gave each other short bows and I said thank you with as much meaning as I could but it seemed inadequate after all he and the other women had shared with me. I felt comforted by the fact that at lunch he had given me his business card, so when I go back to work I can ask a co-worker to help me compose a short thank you email to him in Korean.


Hard to see: temple tucked away on the mountain side--->


So lesson learned? Middle-aged Koreans are the human equivalent of mountain goats, and don't go following them unless your fit to climb every single mountain peak on (and off) the map!


Here is the path I think I did...?

And the video version: