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| Charles Jeong... the guide and event planner |
This past weekend, I went on a hiking trip as a little prequel to the big river trekking trip
mentioned here. I knew that I needed at least a little warm up to give me an idea of what I had gotten myself into. I realized at some point that maybe it wasn't the best idea to jump in feet first to a lengthy hike when I don't really like walking to the mailbox, but the things that I'm capable of accomplishing always seem to be a bit more extensive in my mind than they tend to be in real life.
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| My preferred mode of transportation |
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Emerson or someone like that said that the journey is often better than the destination. I say fuck that guy. Sometimes the journey hurts and the destination is freakin' awesome. We met up around 8am on Sunday morning, a true feat in itself. There were a total of five us in the expat portion of the group; one girl had been up drinking since Saturday. She got less than an hour of sleep on the bus ride over and she still managed to embarrass me on the trail. Truth be told: everyone managed to embarrass me on the trail. The biggest issue for me was that it seemed to be never ending. Every time I'd glance up, I'd see more hill to climb. It wasn't steep enough to require us to tie off or anything, but the incline was still pretty rough in places. I had a small tie string bag to hold a few bottles of water, a change of clothes and a towel. The fifty-year-old Korean men that comprised the other half of our party looked like Frodo and Samwise with their 200 lb bags. Lucky for the rest of us, their bags were full of many, many essentials.
Korean hiking is an entirely different beast from what I was expecting. The trails tend to be a lot busier; hiking's very popular here. There also tends to be a lot of drinking; drinking is very popular too. We started the first leg of the trip with a quick Soju and rice wine toast. Then we had some beer that they had frozen from the night before. (Learned a valuable lesson regarding frozen beer... plastic bottles don't explode in the freezer. They expand with the ice.) Then, we had another quick shot and started up the hill. I don't know for sure how far we traveled, but it was a 2 km minimum (2 km was the lowest distance on the marker, but we might have gone further.) The twelve of us got spread out due to the difficulty of the slope. I had to stop several times to catch my breath. Another older Korean couple stopped at one point to make sure I was okay. They offered me
Makgeoli from their personal supply to help me up the hill. So, everyone on the trail brings a little alcohol for the hike... always good to know. At this point, I was completely split off from the group. Most were in front of me and a few were behind me, but no one was within my eyesight. Luckily, the trail only went up. I came around a curve and saw another large group kind of forming a gauntlet on the trail while they caught their breath. All of them had passed me at one point in the last hour while I was sucking air. As I walked up, they started clapping and giving me high fives as I walked through their makeshift tunnel... very gratifying. Of course, as soon as I went around another bend and they couldn't see me anymore, I went back to hoping there would be a
defibrillator at the top. I caught up with the group at a small open space and the drinks came out again.
After the that little breather, the terrain got much easier. We went a little further up the trail, but then we started down the other side to where we would ultimately have lunch by a cold mountain spring. Considering I was dripping wet with sweat, the cold spring was a welcome sight. Once we actually got to the stream, I also felt a lot more comfortable. Something about using my hands to help climb over the rocks makes me feel a lot more balanced... gravity can be a bitch when you're a guy my size. Four points of support are just safer for me. The water felt great and there was also a light breeze coming along the stream. Nice little change from the stagnant, claustrophobic air on the first part of the journey. (I'm sure that the air was not that stagnant at all, I'm just out of shape.) Regardless, the stream was a welcome change, in my opinion. We set up a small camp and that's when we discovered what else the Korean's had hidden in their backpacks. They pulled out a bunch of cooking utensils, food, alcohol, propane tanks, burners, more alcohol, snacks, and finally, a little alcohol. They had spicy
chicken gizzards that I hadn't ate in a very, very long time. They're not for everyone, but I've loved them since I was little. The other expats and I asked to help, but we were quickly shooed away and the Korean's went to work. The main food ended up being cold noodles that they made fresh with some pork cutlets, hard boiled eggs. They had carried all of this stuff up the mountain while I was silently crying about my clean underwear being too heavy in my bag. Here's a few more pics of the spot were we camped.
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| Grilling pork cutlets |
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| Ever- present beer |
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| Our lunch |
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The food was delicious. I'm still impressed with the little things that they thought to bring to add to the meal: fresh cucumbers, onions, garlic cloves, spices. They've obviously done this many times before.
After lunch and a quick downpour, we started back on the the trail. It basically wrapped around the valley and ended up at Unmunsa Temple. It is the largest female monastery in Korea, housing over 300 female monks (nuns?). The large evergreen tree in the following pictures is believed to be over five hundred years old. The stilts that you see have been put there to help the branches from slagging too much and breaking off. I'm running out of steam for this blog, so I'll let the other pictures below speak for themselves.
All in all, it was one helluva trip. I was pretty beat up when it was all said and done, but I wouldn't pass it up if the trip was offered again. It had been a long day, so we made our way back to the bus and started our drive back to Pusan, but not before stopping off at the local market to replenish our beer supply for the road....
Korean hiking is an entirely different beast from what I was expecting. The trails tend to be a lot busier; hiking's very popular here. There also tends to be a lot of drinking; drinking is very popular too. We started the first leg of the trip with a quick Soju and rice wine toast. Then we had some beer that they had frozen from the night before. (Learned a valuable lesson regarding frozen beer... plastic bottles don't explode in the freezer. They expand with the ice.) Then, we had another quick shot and started up the hill. I don't know for sure how far we traveled, but it was a 2 km minimum (2 km was the lowest distance on the marker, but we might have gone further.) The twelve of us got spread out due to the difficulty of the slope. I had to stop several times to catch my breath. Another older Korean couple stopped at one point to make sure I was okay. They offered me Makgeoli from their personal supply to help me up the hill. So, everyone on the trail brings a little alcohol for the hike... always good to know. At this point, I was completely split off from the group. Most were in front of me and a few were behind me, but no one was within my eyesight. Luckily, the trail only went up. I came around a curve and saw another large group kind of forming a gauntlet on the trail while they caught their breath. All of them had passed me at one point in the last hour while I was sucking air. As I walked up, they started clapping and giving me high fives as I walked through their makeshift tunnel... very gratifying. Of course, as soon as I went around another bend and they couldn't see me anymore, I went back to hoping there would be a defibrillator at the top. I caught up with the group at a small open space and the drinks came out again.
After the that little breather, the terrain got much easier. We went a little further up the trail, but then we started down the other side to where we would ultimately have lunch by a cold mountain spring. Considering I was dripping wet with sweat, the cold spring was a welcome sight. Once we actually got to the stream, I also felt a lot more comfortable. Something about using my hands to help climb over the rocks makes me feel a lot more balanced... gravity can be a bitch when you're a guy my size. Four points of support are just safer for me. The water felt great and there was also a light breeze coming along the stream. Nice little change from the stagnant, claustrophobic air on the first part of the journey. (I'm sure that the air was not that stagnant at all, I'm just out of shape.) Regardless, the stream was a welcome change, in my opinion. We set up a small camp and that's when we discovered what else the Korean's had hidden in their backpacks. They pulled out a bunch of cooking utensils, food, alcohol, propane tanks, burners, more alcohol, snacks, and finally, a little alcohol. They had spicy chicken gizzards that I hadn't ate in a very, very long time. They're not for everyone, but I've loved them since I was little. The other expats and I asked to help, but we were quickly shooed away and the Korean's went to work. The main food ended up being cold noodles that they made fresh with some pork cutlets, hard boiled eggs. They had carried all of this stuff up the mountain while I was silently crying about my clean underwear being too heavy in my bag. Here's a few more pics of the spot were we camped.
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