And the Adventures Continue

During my first week at the school, one of the Korean teacher’s introduced herself. She’s a Korean language teacher but has been going to Canada every year for the past three or four years to do a home-stay during the summer. Her English is amazing considering that she’s only been studying English for the past four years and is forty-something.

While I was showing her pictures from the East Coast (she usually does home stay in Edmonton), she was asking me what I like to do in my free time. Since I was still on a post-summer-travel-rush, I immediately said I like to travel and hike. This, for many reasons, was a bad idea. She told me that a group of teachers were planning a trip to Seorak Mountain on the eastern side of Korea and that I should join the group. Because it was my first week at school, I agreed to the idea and said I would be excited to go.

Cue me, Wednesday morning at 2:00am beginning the most intense hike I’ve done to date. Yes, 2:00am. We had to see the sunrise.

The trail began with about an hour of direct incline on what can only be called a stone staircase. It was obviously man-made but wasn’t a perfect structure. The stones were often at awkward angels and the path was narrow. This wouldn’t have been so bad if there was two full bus loads of Koreans joining my group of Korean teachers on this early morning hike.

Korean hikers are nothing like Chinese who take on mountains. Every single Korean I saw (and one 10 year old boy) was dressed like they were scaling Everest. Fancy nylon hiking pants, shirts and vests, hiking sticks, packs with bear bells, tin cups and spare carabiners attached, not to mention the foam sit-upons. Further to their gear, these men and women meant business on their hike. I was pushed out of the way by their walking sticks (often they had two!) more times than I could count. This would have been less frustrating if it was light out.

Thanks to my friend Jeff, I was equipped with a nice head-lamp and have never been so thankful to have a head-lamp. As I made my way up the mountain, I couldn’t decide if the trek would be more or less scary if it had not been light. In the dark, I couldn’t see past the light that my lamp cast. Had I been able to, I would have been more aware of the sheer drop to my right or just how slipper the boulders were that I was climbing by rope. By the time we reached the peak (1780 metres), I was exhausted and cold. Since it had been misting for the past hour, there was no sunrise to see. In fact, you could barely see more than five metres down the mountain. We cooked a 'delicious' morning breakfast of kimichi and ramen noodles before spending five hours making our way back down the mountain.

Except “back down” was more of a “back up” and then “a little down” followed by more "back up” and “up” and “up” before it became “back down at a thirty-degree angle". The ‘enjoyment’ of all of this was heightened by the only English speaking Korean teacher (the one who roped me into it in the first place) constantly warning me about how steep the hill was and how I should “go slow” and “be careful” and “take it easy” and make sure I didn’t step on the rocks that were at an angle or put my toe down first. Always always always, heel first. Helpful hints the first time but by hour four, in the rain, with burning calf muscles, all I could utter was an “MmmHMM!” in response.

Twelve hours after we started, we reached the base of the mountain and I have never been so happy in all my life. I still can’t walk up stairs today, but at least I’m not at the top of a mountain.

Going down down down. There was a staircase because it was so steep at this point.