Via Korea.: Stairs for giants...

A few weekends ago we went hiking. Having said that, let me back up and fully explain the details that preceded the hike. A couple months after I arrived in Korea, I was notified of a facebook group that goes on hikes throughout the year. I joined the group and then, because winter was coming and no one was setting up any hikes, I forgot that I had joined. When I received a notification from the group two weeks ago I thought “what is this? Oh yeah, that hiking group.” Intrigued, I checked out the details. This is exactly (no really, exactly) what was written about it:

theme:
- urban hike and trekking
- 12km(around 8 miles), 6~7hours
- novice, everybody can join and enjoy trekking. if you want to walk, then you can make it.
- walk along the fortress from Dongdaemoon(east gate) to Namdaemoon(South gate)
- some part of trails will be road, pedestrian crossing
- 3mountains Naksan, Bukaksan, Inwangsan - mountain(most of part are well arranged and some part with stairs or fences)
- you don't need any hiking gears but hiking boots and pants would be good.

It looked fun and Holly and I decided it was a good way to spend the weekend; (semi-colon used correctly? I’m thinking, no.) free leisure activitiesssss….I’m in. So early Saturday morning found us packing a bag and heading to the station for our two hour subway ride to the meeting point. When we got there, our guide, Warren, who we had never met before, greeted us with an excited hello and a warm hug. There were only about 6 people there when we arrived but soon our ranks grew to about 30, with an array of different nationalities. Our friend Laura met us there as well. Warren, full of energy, said “Ok, let’s all get in a group and STRETCH!” We all looked at each other and said…”uh, stretch?! We aren’t stretching.” …We should have stretched. Piece of advice, when Warren says stretch…he’s not messing around, do it. *serious nod* Then we were on our way like the Travelocity gnome! “I’m on my wayyyy.” Get it? No? Ok. We started in the middle of many businesses so we had to wend our way through the town to find the path along the fortress wall. The wall was very interesting because you could tell which part was old, and which was newly rebuilt. The lower part was some 500 years old while the top was obviously very recently repaired. Here’s a picture for you visual learners:

Warren, Holly, Laura, and I pretty much lead the pack the whole way. Apparently we are fast walkers. Part of the trail was icy to begin with. What part? Why, the downhill part of course. We had to walk off the path on the few spots where dirt showed through. I did take this opportunity to try my hand at some downhill ice-skating though. It was pretty out of control, and fun. Here is a picture of this particular icy part, the railing was handy to grab when sliding too fast..haha!

We had some characters on the hike, a few names we remembered, but others we had to make up based on their physical attributes or clothes: a guy from New Zealand who Holly lovingly dubbed “Pinstripes,” because of his choice of pants, he was ornery and oddly dating a girl named Kaley, and “Red beard” who wasn’t a pirate, but did in fact have a red beard. The hike turned out to be pretty intense. Some parts were amazingly steep and made us question the “novice” label of the hike. Much of it was covered in stairs…but these weren’t NORMAL stairs…they were very inconsistent in their spacing and at one point the exclamation “what are these, stairs for GIANTS!?!” may or may not have been shouted between gasping breaths. The view from all three mountains was spectacular and made the sore limbs totally worth it. We felt like we had hiked along side Korea’s equivalence of the Great Wall.

Afterwards Holly, Laura (I’m omitting that Oxford comma…only because it’s a pet peeve of someone I know…take THAT Kanga!) and I went to Kraze Burger and had pretty much the MOST DELICIOUS burger known to man kind. We had the opportunity to join some of the other hikers for some Korean pancakes, but I decided to opt out; I wasn’t feeling like eating squid at the time, or ever really. We will be doing another hike with the group in a few weeks. This one is located near the east coast in a National Park. It’s supposed to be a beautiful hike during winter. We were supposed to hike it this weekend but, in the words of a fellow hiker, it experienced a “snow obliteration,” and the government actually shut it down until they can get some trails cleared. This time we will have learned our lesson and we’ll make sure and stretch. J love you guys. Another blog soon. Very soon.