26 November 2022
The goat
Soyosan hike
Today I did a small hike practically on the North Korean border with the easiest to pronounce name of any mountain in Korea - Soyosan.
Getting there and back took forever. Getting there took over 2 hours, that is longer than it takes to go to Busan on the bullet train. Getting back took just under 2 hours. Ridiculous... The entire journey was on the subway, which in Seoul goes a really... long... way...
I must admit when it was 10am and I was just starting a hike, with a thousand other people, I wondered if it was worth it today, but it was. Yes there were plenty of sections with too many other people, as photographed below, but there were still enough sections with no one, the scenery was good, the weather was cold but good, and it was a bit shorter than my normal hikes to compensate for the long slow stopping all stations train rides.
By shorter I mean just on 10km, 19,000 steps.
It is getting late and I need to go out and fight 200,000 protesters who are back as they are every Saturday and find my dinner, so onto the pics.
Soyosan is also the name of the station, the last station on line 1. It is a very boring station.
You know you are in a popular hiking area when there is a street fall of unofficial shops selling shoes, tomatoes and vacuum cleaners.
What!!! I have to pay a $2 fine to get in to the hike. Outrageous. I would later find out I did not need to pay.
The first part of the hike is a road, lots of other people.
I selected the longest possible loop, which thinned out the people, but still there were many people.
Nice scenery, what is that? It is coming towards me...
The goat!
With the goat behind me, time to examine where I would be going, around to the right then back over that, then around the left.
Top of summit number one. Too many people. Later I would pass a group of at least 100 coming the other way.
Best view of the day. That is the direction of Seoul, but it is beyond the horizon.
I will go over all of those. It was steep and rocky for much of the way.
The station is down in the valley there.
You can do a very long hike from here as a starting or end point. It is the end point of a 50km trail running race.
Then, this happened. And I had to follow them slowly for over an hour until they stopped for one of a few 3 course meals Koreans like to have on every hike.
Nice rocks and trees, but hard to climb over all the time.
More rocks and trees.
OK, here is the reason for the $2 fee. And there is a path to avoid it. Apparently, it is a significant cultural heritage site.
It has a waterfall.
As far as shrines go, pretty basic, and parts of it were under construction.
The public toilet however, very impressive.
The shrine is not quite the end of the hike and does not get you back at the road, but it is a very developed path back down from here, with a mobile phone tower for the monks to watch star wars etc.
Last pic, a waterfall and a cave. I think there is another waterfall cave combo elsewhere with the waterfall inside a cave. I saw some glass doors leading into the rock face with candles inside and the map said waterfall. Which is probably what a lot of people come here to see.
Now to navigate the protest and find my dinner.