Via Korea.: Hiking Seoraksan: "What's taking these muggles so long?!"

In Korea, the word “san” refers to a mountain. It took me a little while (time frames aren’t necessary here people) to realize this. After it was brought to my attention, I realized I had been saying Seoraksan mountain…which means I had actually been saying Seorak mountain mountain. Silly me. The same goes for the word “do” meaning island (or province) and “gang” meaning river. So some advice, you don’t have to say Jejudo Island (Jeju island island), or Hangang river (Han river river). Or you could, and feel silly, like me. Do what you want.

Tangent, back on track. There are several mountains/mountain ranges in Korea, but the three tallest (that we can get to, because the tallest is quite inconvenient, being mostly in..uh..North Korea.) are called, in order, Hallsan (on Jejudo), Jirisan (south part of Korea) and Seoraksan (North East side). I hiked Hallsan last October without knowing these details when I visited Jejudo with Sarah and David.

The hiking group I’ve written about before decided to do a Seoraksan overnight bus trip the last weekend in February. Holly and I willingly joined in, once again, not knowing what we were getting ourselves into. But that seems to be the norm in this country so…no biggie. The plan, was to meet at the bus station at 11:30pm Friday night, drive through the night, and hike to the top for a, hopefully, spectacular sunrise. Normally, from what I gathered along the way, most hikers start pretty early, hike to the top, sleep there, and then hike down the next day, making it a two day hike. Not us! NO! We decided to do it all in one day! Nuts!

Let me first start with my three biggest mistakes…I shouldn’t start with my mistakes, but they are necessary for the rest of the story. 1. 3 ½ hours of sleep (on a bus, even better), is NOT ENOUGH for a 14 hour hike. 2. Tennis shoes, no matter what you tell yourself, are not proper footwear for an icy, 14 hour winter hike. 3. Headlamps/a flashlight would be a very, very smart idea when starting at 3am for a 14 HOUR HIKE. In my defense on this one, there is usually a language barrier involving explanations on these hikes. Though it’s never proven to be a huge problem in the past, this particular issue could have been more clearly explained. I also could have USED MY BRAIN and thought about the implications of being at the top for the sunrise, which meant we would have been hiking in completely darkness. *head smack*

Ahem. Moving on. I darted out of work that Friday night, ran to Holly’s, grabbed our bags, and got on the subway to meet the crew in Yongsan where our chartered bus, and new friends, were waiting.

The first thing I saw when I walked down the bus aisle was a KU hat…Rockchalk! Another Kansan was here and after further discussion, we discovered that we actually had a mutual acquaintance. Amazing! We then picked a seat, listened to some interesting instructions from our fearless/funny/energetic/ sometimes frustrating group leader, Warren, and headed to the mountain.

When we arrived, we piled off the bus in a somewhat scattered manner and somehow ended up at the trailhead all together. Warren had gone to the ranger’s office to check on the trail status. When he returned, he informed us that much of the snow had melted off the rocks near the bottom of the trails because of the relatively warm weather the last couple of days. “Oh that’s good” I thought (thinking of my awesome choice of footwear) but it would have been smart of me to let him finish talking before I thought that. Why? Because then he said the very heavy fog was freezing on those uncovered rocks, making for some fairly treacherous footing situations. Optimism! That’s the key! Let’s go crew! And away we went!

It didn’t take us long to realize that there was a potential of losing each other on the ascent. A few other groups of Korean hikers were determined to make the top by sunrise as well, and they were intermingling with our group and getting us all SORTS of confused in the dark. So on our first break someone jokingly said, “We should make a bird call like “coo coo!” so that we know where everyone is in the dark.” Many people laughed at the silliness of this statement…but it soon proved to be a necessary part of our hike. If one group got too far ahead someone would just coo coo! And they would stop and wait for the group. Don’t judge. It worked OK?!

Soon we just accepted the fact that unless we tied ourselves together with ropes, we were going to get separated somewhat. At one point, I was hiking with three complete strangers, but they all had headlamps and were very helpful! In especially hazardous situations they pointed it down at my feet to assist me. Thanks guys.

The first three hours or so of the hike were pretty straight up. It was quite difficult. About an hour into the hike we had to put our “clamp-ons” or, spikes for our shoes, on because we were getting into the heavier snow. These spikes were helpful in the snow but when we would hike on the rocks again, they kind of got in the way. If you had any time to look up instead of at your feet, you would see the sparks when the spikes connected with these rocks.

In the first several hours of darkness we walked over several rivers, and I only know this because I could hear them, scaled some rocks with ropes, lost the trail a few times and thought maybe a canister of oxygen would have been a good idea. Good thing these mountains weren’t that high above sea level. Sheesh.

When it started to get lighter outside, we noticed that the fog was also getting thinner. Could we be near the top!? “In 20 min.” said Warren. This meant another 45 at least. We spotted the top around 6:40, right around the time we came all the way out of the clouds. It was magnificent. It was like a blanket underneath. We stopped to take pictures and realized it would be even better at the top, so even though I felt like I couldn’t lift my legs ANYMORE, I pushed on, and made it. The view was even better. The clouds looked like you could just jump into them and land in fluffy cotton. They slowly flowed over and into the valleys around the area. It was very peaceful. But also very cold, so after spending about 45 minutes there, we headed another 20 minutes to a shelter on the ridge to rest, eat and get more water.

The way down was demanding on the knees. This was made better (and more fun) at times by the snow. You could just sit down, and slide several feet on your bum. You had to be careful of course, for one of these things could happen if you got careless: 1. hit a tree 2. Hit another hiker 3. Fly off the mountain (haha, but seriously) 4. Hit a big bump and break your…rear end 5. Wind up in a river 6. Miss your trail.

We were less careful in getting separated around hour 12, with 2 left to go. We wanted to be done, so some groups split off to try and shave off some time. I ended up with three other guys. One, named Yoon, had just finished working in Australia for a year, so he spoke English very well. After unsuccessfully trying to pass a group of slower Koreans, we became a little frustrated that they wouldn’t stop to let us go by on the very narrow path. Yoon surprised me by exclaiming, “What’s taking these Muggles so long!?” which made me laugh very hard. A Harry Potter reference. Awesome.

So after 14 hours, we made it to the bottom, and stumbled onto the bus. Very sore, but very worth it. A three hour bus ride and a two hour subway ride later, Holly and I walked into the apartment, and passed out. It was a great weekend. The pictures are below!

More stories soon! Sorry that one was so long. Eeks.

Love.