Legends of the fall

Seoraksan must be one of my favorite places in Korea - I've been there on four occasions now and still keep finding new trails and heights to explore each time. The latest expedition was when Alexis and I teamed up with Jared and Katie last weekend (Nov. 4th and 5th) for a spot of relaxed autumnal hiking/sightseeing. It's a mite difficult to time a leaf-watching trip to Seoraksan - go too early and there are no fall colours; leave it too late and you've got a weekend of looking at defoliated deciduous trees in bollock-freezing Siberian winds. On this occasion we got it just right, as a certain felonious blonde-haired porridge thief once said.

"It's hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse" -Adlai E. Stevenson

On the buses - Lexie hops aboard


Nope, your eyes aren't deceiving you. That is a red London double-decker bus in the middle of a Korean national park. There's a fancy hotel called the Kensington right beside the park entrance and this is one of two mighty Routemasters that have been imported to form part of its 'authentic Anglo charm'.

There was a 2-hour wait for the cable car on Saturday afternoon so we decided to go for a 'small' hike up to Ulsanbawi instead. I always forget that the last section, the near-vertical ascent to the summit, has over 800 steps; my mind's way of tricking me into a light dose of vertigo-inducing step aerobics. We're very certain of the number of steps 'cause Alexis counted every single one of them.

On Sunday morning we took the cable car up to the imposing viewpoint of Gweongeumseong Fortress. This method of ascent is very popular with tourists, mainly because of the complete lack of effort required to get a spectacular view of Ulsanbawi and the surrounding range. Evidence enough of its popularity was the fact that, despite being in the park at 10 AM, we still had to wait over an hour and a half for an empty slot. Thankfully, the park uses a time stamp system for the tickets so you don't have to stand in line for ages. We opted to use the intervening period to grab coffee and waffles, and take a little stroll around the lower reaches of the park.

When we finally did make it to the upper cable car station, we hiked the short distance to the summit above. It's not far at all, but getting to the the summit itself requires a bit of climbing - not for the faint-of-heart or light-of-head. Scrambling over the final few boulders to the top I was struck by the following thought, as well as a hefty breeze:
Exactly what the hell was I thinking in being here, perched on a very narrow mountain ridge, exactly two steps from a very, very long drop - the sort where one might not just say, "Oh, shit!", but rather have enough time to consult a thesaurus for a wide range of suitable epithets before spattering onto the granite below - while being buffeted by increasingly strong gusts of wind? These little moments of common-sense are becoming more common, if you'll excuse the pun, as I get a ittle bit older.




I wasn't joking (well, not too much) about the wind, either. As we passed the park's ticket booth, not ten minutes after arriving back down to the lower cable car station, we saw the following notice:

Due to dangerously strong winds,the cable car service has been suspended until further notice.

So, had we been even slightly later, there would have been a good hour or two's walk down instead of a three-minute gondola ride.


The mountain snaps are all available at higher resolution (800x600). Click on the images for the full-size versions.