The Story Of My Hike To 1708 Meters

There are a ton of mountains to hike in Korea; which is awesome for our family because we love to hike. (as you have probably noticed from the many hiking posts I have done) Some of the mountains are just glorified hills and a few of them are real mountains.  It has become my goal to hike as many of the mountains here as I can, so when my two good friends talked about driving out to the east coast and hiking the 3rd highest mountain in South Korea I was very excited to join in on the fun.   We made reservations at a small hostel about 30 minutes away from the mountain, packed all our hiking gear and headed out on a Sunday afternoon.

My two awesome friends

 The night before any major physical challenge you are supposed to eat lots of carbs, but we ended up eating at an all-you-can-eat meat restaurant.  We probably ate more protein that night than I have in the past year combined.

 We were doing this trip on the cheap so we all stayed in one room that only had 1 double bed.  I brought a sleeping bag and they gave us some extra blankets and I slept on the floor.  We stayed in a small, family run hostel that was so cool.  The owner spoke some English and was very helpful.  When Russ and I plan a family trip out there this is where we are going to stay. 

 After doing some research on this mountain I realized this was going to be a very long hike.  The blogs I read estimated the trek to take anywhere from 5-12 hours one way.  There were huts where you could spend the night, but we wanted to try to tackle the hike in one day.  Therefore, we decided to start our hike at 4:30 am.  Yep, you read that right we started hiking at 4:30 AM.  They are as crazy as I am.

At the bottom and still happy.

 One thing we didn't account for in our plans was how very dark it is at 4:30 am.  There are no lights on the mountain and the moon was not very bright.  There was a massive Buddha at the bottom of the mountain and my friend took a picture of it as we walked by.  This is how her picture came out..

The lights at the bottom of the picture are some prayer candles that are lit near the Buddha.

Thankfully, my husband was wise enough to throw a head lamp into my pack as I was walking out the door.  At the time I told him "we are not going to need that thing" to which he patiently replied "just take it to be sure".  Well, I was proved very wrong as that headlamp was pretty much the only light that we had to guide us for the first 2 hours of hiking.

The peak we were hiking to was named Daecheongbong and it was a 10.5km hike from the bottom of the mountain.  As we were hiking it felt a lot longer than 10.5km.

We were told that the leaves were in peak season at this park during the days we were there.  Obviously when we started the hike we couldn't even see the path right in front of us much less that leaves on the trees, but as the sun slowly started to come up we were able to see the beautiful leaves that were all around us.

It was pretty much a straight shot up the mountain through a canyon. 

I actually took these pictures on the way back down the mountain because it was still completely dark when we passed them in the morning. 

There were 2 paths we could have taken to the top.  If we were going to spend the night we would have taken the longer "expert" path, but we wanted to do the entire hike in a day and so we took the "advanced" path.  This sign shows differences in the two paths.

Digging in my pack as we walked.

 At some points they had steps but even they went straight up.

 The higher we got there were less leaves, but the views were awesome. 

Still so far to go...but getting closer.

 Often hiking groups will hang these small ribbons on the trees as they hike so that anyone that is separated from the group can know what path the group took and so that when they come back down the mountain they can follow the same path.  This is the most hiking ribbons on a tree that I have ever seen.

The mountain water was so clear.  If we come back sometime with the girls when it is warm we will definitely be getting in that water.

Here it is just touching the top of one of the peaks.

 The scenery was breathtaking and so peaceful.  We couldn't see the sun rise but we could see it shining on the mountains.

We thought we were doing so good.  We only had 2.7km left.  It was probably for the best that we didn't know what those 2.7km involved or we most likely would have turned around and gone home.  It was 2.7km of straight up hill over rocks. By far the most difficult portion of the hike.

 Thankfully we had some beautiful scenery to look at along the way.

Only 1.2km left.  We can see the peak in the distance!!  We were so excited..

 How cool is it that you could mail something from the top of this mountain?  If I would have known about this I would have brought something with me to mail from the top. 

Bummer for the post man that has to hike up to empty this mail box out.

View from the peak.

All men at the top...and us 3 women!

Whoop! Whoop!  We made it to 1708 meters!

We only stayed at the peak for about 15 minutes.  It has taken us almost 7 hours to get up there and we knew it was going to take a while to get back down.  Plus it was really cold and windy on the peak.  But what an awesome feeling of accomplishment when we got this picture taken.

The trek back down the mountain wasn't much easier than going up.  Going down is hard on the knees and we were really tired.  The one big benefit in going down was that it was light out and we could see all the beautiful trees that we had missed going up in the dark.

The lower peaks were covered in colorful leaves.

This is one of my favorite fall pictures from the day.

Back at the bottom of the mountain we were able to finally see the Buddha.

Those candles at the bottom don't look nearly as bright in the daylight as they did in the dark.

The entrance to the park was beautiful.

In the left of this picture you can kind of see a cable car that is going up the mountain.  It doesn't take you to the highest peak, but it still takes you very high. 

 Almost 13 hours later we were back at the same sign.  We were all standing, smiling and still friends...therefore it was a successful hike.  :) 

Actually, it was one of the most fun girls weekends away I have ever had.  We made lifelong memories on this trip.  I have written about how special and unique military friendships are.  These two women are truly examples of awesome friends.  I am so thankful we had this opportunity together.

That evening we had a crazy seafood dinner and were in bed by 8:30.

 Enjoying the leaves as we drove home.

 Another mountain in Korea checked off my list!