Mountain Trek

So last weekend I went hiking around Bukhansan National Park with Gord and Charlotte and I feel great about it because a: I got tons of exercise and b: I surprised myself with how much I was physically able to accomplish.

Here's what we're talking about.

As you can see, Bukhansan is not just a national park, but also a large collection of mountains, some reaching as high as 836m above sea level. While we did not reach the highest summit in the park, we did climb a good 700m up and walked a few kilometers along the ridge connecting two lofty peaks.

The ridge was razor-thin and dropped steeply on both sides.

What made this climb so exceptional for me, was the fact that rather than having a nice cleared trail for you to leisurely walk up, Bukhansan elected to force it's climbers to scale some pretty rugged, very steep and sometimes outright dangerous terrain. I was occasionally gripped with fear when I tried to make a few ledges, or when my feet slid across loose gravel. My life was never at risk, but it was not a task to be taken lightly.

One such treacherous climb.

Another not-so-treacherous climb.

But still, there were guys and girls, some probably in their 70s, doing this trek, and they definitely had many years of experience and the gear to show for it. At times, we would stop to have a quick bite and relax, and they would offer us food and drinks (including beer?) in exchange for friendly camaraderie. Drinking beer during this hike would have been the worst idea. Some guys were even drinking soju!

This group insisted on taking a picture with us.

Every once and a while, we would come to a peak that provided an amazing vista over Seoul and the surrounding mountains. It's absolutely impossible to capture the splendor of being on top of a mountain and seeing for miles around in a picture, but these will have to do:

Gord and I during our climactic final battle.

From a distance Seoul looked like a giant circuit board, with it's ugly apartment complexes arranged in a utilitarian manner. But even that was breathtaking at the height we were at.

Occasionally we came across actual temples in the mountains, and some were surprisingly ornate and beautiful. We even came across a natural spring with clean drinking water!

Temple

Spring water

Great day to say the least. Worth waking up at 9am on a sunday! And it's funny because the park is so massively huge that we maybe explored about 5% of it! And if you are wondering why we all have bandannas around our necks in the pictures, it's because they also doubled as maps!

COOL!