9 April 2019
Seven and a half years later
Hiking over wonderful Gwanaksan from Sadang station
So, 7.5 years ago I came to Korea, and climbed over Gwanaksan. You can find that by looking at my old trip report from 2011, ALL MY CONTENT IS ALL ONLINE FOREVER. In fact I recently went back and re edited and re exported the pics from that trip in higher detail. Anyway, Gwanaksan is still great, today I climbed a much longer, much more technical route than last time, and was rewarded with the best views of Seoul yet.
I started out early, because I feared it would rain, my fears almost proved correct as I was returning to my hotel, but even right now its still not raining, but thats enough about the weather, yet again.
Also I mentioned yesterday that I have not taken enough photos, that situation is remedied today, with too many photos. I culled quite a few too.
Getting to the start of this hike could not be simpler, you exit a subway station, and there is the map. Ending the hike is the same but in reverse, you step off the trail, and theres the subway station. Korea, so convenient.
Just as I was pondering how convenient Korea is, when returning to my hotel I needed to find an ATM so I could go buy some water, and strangely, there was no ATM to be found. Normally theres 55 of them on every corner, every subway station has 20 of them, but today, in Gangnam no less, I had to walk about 2km to find one. Very weird. All so I could buy water, you cant drink the tap water, very inconvenient.
The only strange thing to report today was that on the subway I saw two people looking at their phone crying, not at the same time, and not with each other. Both times I repositioned myself so I see their phones and could therefore see what was making them cry, and both times, it was a close up of someone crying in super slow motion on a K-drama. The national past time is slow motion crying at slow motion crying.
The start of the hike today was at Sadang, a very vibrant area, I think it is quite near the Seoul National University, the second best University in all of Korea after the Kim Il-sung Galactic Juche Academy.
Todays hike has a temple at the start, called the something hermitage. It would not be the last hermitage today. What is a hermitage? Internet says, 'the dwelling of a hermit', well there you go!
I got off to a rocky start, very early, trying to beat the rain.
The first part of the hike was easy steps and purple flowers.
A great view developed very quickly, and stayed with me all day!
North Koreans are all over this mountain hiding in tunnels. Some of these tunnels are linked up into a big complex of tunnels, I am assuming they are blocked off just below the surface but I did not go in to check either!
A rocky view.
The impostor flag! There is a unified Korea flag that they use when they compete together at the olympics.
I took my big fat head shot early in case it started raining. It didnt.
Once up on a peak I realised there were more peaks to cross before getting to the main peak. As you can see sometimes theres a stair case up the peak so that you dont plummet to your death. There were still plenty of opportunities for plummeting if thats your thing.
I kept appreciating the view. Good times.
Probably one view shot too many, but theres a few better ones to come.
Walking over the rocky ridges was great fun, a bit windy at times, but nothing scary. Rain would have made it very slippery!
I still have to get to that tower, until then, heres some little trees and purple flowers. This path had next to no other people on it, of course the one time I decided that public urination was the order of the day, the one guy I did see came around a corner.
At times I had to get down on my hands and haul myself up. Great fun.
Mooooore view.
View of the summit through a cave. The wind through the cave hole was pretty intense.
Rain coming! I better get a move on.
Almost there.
I think this is the view from as close to the top as you can get, the actual top is blocked off due to military tv towers.
Behold, how to ruin the top of a mountain. This is only a small bit of the ruination, theres lots of other towers and razor wire in every direction.
A cool Nazi hermit house at Hermitage 2.
Just like the first hermitage, they have strung up a heap of plastic lanterns to scare the birds away.
The path down was really comparatively easy, as it was the main route to the temple. This was one of the only challenging bits. As you can see if you look carefully, they strung lanterns to show the way.
First glimpse of Gwacheon, the far side of Seoul.
It does not look that steep back to the top, but it is. It never looks steep. I want to invent a new camera that allows you to dial in how steep you want things to look.
Most of the path down looked more like this. Apart from the bits with Hessian carpet laid over the rocks.
Bonus upwards view.
After exiting the path, there was a crazy shop that had everything, including a gold statue.
Some blossoms meant every Korean schoolgirl was SELFYING, so I took a creep shot from afar (heavy crop).
Final shot of the day, GWACHEON, I think its a satellite city set up to house government buildings, largely under construction. The zoo is also around here somewhere, I went there in 2011. Nice clouds!