The Longest Hike

The day was a beautiful day for hiking. It was cool but not cold. It was sunny but not glaring. And it was busy on the mountain but well, yeah, busy. I suppose that's the only down side.

We got to the first peak at around two. The climb was hard, but we were suprised to find the peak packed with people. Even though we had to wait in line, we made sure to make it to the very top. It was worth it: the view was spectacular.

We didn't spend much time at the peak because it was so crowded. And instead of going back down the busy way, we decided to cross a ridge of rock and go down the other route, which is generally less busy because a harder climb (the way we went down was the way we went up two weeks ago). The map didn't make it seen like the two trails were very far apart...but they were.

The first stretch of the ridge was pretty easy. It was fairly level and not too rocky. Even tough it was easy, I was surprised to find a restaurant at the peak of one mountain (surprisingly the highest mountain we climbed that day). You'll have that in the mountains in Korea. So many people here like to climb mountains that a restuarant can actually stay in business on a mountain. Generally, the restaurants are at the smaller peaks, or about half way up the larger peaks.

Darryl, my friend from work, and I sat down and were encircled by Koreans. This happens. It's a rarity for Koreans to see foreigners, especially out in the mountains, and many of the mountain climbers come from small villages where there are no foreigners at all.

One of the men spoke some English and started chatting with us. It was the usual conversation: "Where are you from?" "How long have you been here?" "How do you like Korea?"

The other men bought us Maw-Ko-Lee; Korean whiskey, they call it. Really, it's fermented soy milk. That sounds gross, but it's not. It's rather sweet and doesn't really taste alcoholic.

Soon after the drinks came, the English speaker left leaving us with people who spoke no Korean. Even though there's a huge language barrier here most times, Koreans are generally nice to us, especially is we do "Korean" things like climb mountains. We spoke to one man in particular as he bought us food and more drinks.

My Korean is still pretty poor, but with him talking slowly and simply, and me trying out my Korean, the conversation went okay. We asked him which way he was going, and he pointed to the rock we just came from. We told him we were headed down and pointed in the other direction.

He looked confused. No no, he said, and pointed the other direction. Then he said something that I only half understood. I couldn't tell if he was saying that we couldn't get down that way or if he was saying he wasn't going down that way. Either way, he didn't seem to pleased with us going the opposite way.

Darryl and I talked a second and decided to head off that way anyway. How wrong could the map be?

I learned something that day: when an older Korean guy says don't go that way, don't go that way.

The map showed a way down a kilometer or so past the restaurant. It wasn't there. We kept going through winding paths that often had many branches here and there. Before we knew it, we were lost.

Darryl kept saying we should turn back. I disagreed.

"Even if we have to go to the far peak," I said, "it's still shorter to go this way."

We did have to go to the far peak (the peak from two weeks ago), and the trail wasn't easy. It wound up mountains, down mountains, and back up mountains again. I completely lost track of how many peaks we hit that day, but I'm sure it was more than 5, probably 7 or 8.

I have to say that this trail was less busy, which was good, and that the view were incredible, which was great. It was, however, the most work I've ever done climbing. When we finally made it to the other trail, I was exhausted. And we still had 5.6 kilometers to go. I'm lucky that was all downhill, because I simply don't think I would have made it if we had to go up anymore.

All told, we probably hiked about 15 kilometers that day (something like 9.5 miles) up and down mountains. Let's just say I slept well last night.

R