5 April 2026
I have risen again
Bulmosan from Seongju Temple
Easter Sunday, that means it's a hiking day.
Today I went somewhere that has no map on alltrails. The map on Naver (Korean google maps because google maps is banned in Korea) showed many trails to the top of the 801m high mountain which is the highest in the area. Those trails are wrong, I think they were sourced from open streetmap years ago, the trails near the bottom are simply not there, I had to bushwhack back to the temple, and then just follow the obvious trail not on the map all the way to the top.
Because of my lack of reliable map, I decided to come down the same way, even though there were a lot of other ridges I probably could have followed.
Also, even though there is a convenience store between the bus stop and the temple, it was not open early on Sunday, fortunately I had bought my supplies before boarding the bus in town.
Now for the stats -
14.57km - but this included getting lost at the start
4 hours 33 minutes - could be done in 4 hours
839m vertical ascent
1,188 calories burned
24,000 steps
The bus did not let me down today, I was allowed to board from the BRT stop near my hotel. It seems as though there are at least 3 buses (busses, I am never sure if it is one or two esses) you can take, today I took bus 151.
I got off about here, greeted by a drain and a highway overpass.
The walk up to the temple goes past this reservoir, which appears to be in use as it has a fence all the way around it, I had to feed my camera carefully through the fence to take this photo.
Time to enter the temple area. As mentioned, this is the way to the hike. Today I checked out the temple, doubled back to here, followed a phantom trail that I should not have, wasted probably an hour to slide down a hill back to the temple.
The temple is guarded by a sacred elephant and polar bear, both of which are very common South Korean animals.
They are preparing for Buddhas birthday, but have not hung the plastic extremely flammable lanterns yet.
The stone pagoda appears to be the focal point of this facility, although signs say it all dates back to 800AD, none of the buildings appeared particularly interesting. You can also see the towers on top of the mountain I am about to climb from here.
Here are some rocks, however this trail was not really rocky at all, hence it made for much faster progress.
A nice trail with the early morning light. I was thrilled to actually be on a trail after earlier being lost in the scrub.
Greener and less dead than the recent hikes in the north of the country.
Purple flowers today too.
Lots of purple flowers.
This seat and sign actually helped convince me I was on the right trail. Although surely they all lead to the top anyway. The top of this mountain has a public road up to it and is called sunset peak.
That is part of Changwon down there, soon you will see all the different parts of Changwon.
Once I got to the top, there were indeed other people around. Down there is Gimhae, which is basically part of Busan, it is where the Busan airport is. Korea is a small country, I presume I could walk down there and catch a metro into Busan.
A huge number of tv antennas on the summit today.
That is the part of Changwon I am staying in. You can see the clear delineation between industrial and residential areas.
The top has hundreds of metres of walkways and lookouts. I expected there to be more people given that it is a weekend with good weather.
Apparently, that is also part of Changwon, and the ocean. I might go to that part tomorrow, although there is also a third part too.
This photo shows that there is a mountain between the two parts of Changwon pictured above.
I really enjoyed the summit area walkways.
It is me, unshaven, and probably getting too much sun.
I did not take many photos on the way down because it was the same way as the way up. There is however this one small stream to cross, it was not really a problem.
The piles of rubbish signalled that I was returning to the Buddhist temple area.
And then as I returned quite early to my hotel, I noticed a new concept in fine dining, Japanese and Australian fusion, complete with a kangaroo dressed as a samurai. Perhaps I will go there for dinner.