lost or what?

Here is Yangpyeong as seen from the entrance to the graveyard. One of these buildings is not like the others.

Those mountains in the mist are where I am going, I have to wade through a brown swamp to get there. Today it was cold in the morning! 12 degrees, I don't think it got much over 20 all day.

Start of the trail was hessian rug paradise.

Then rocks arrived, and for the rest of the day, I had to watch my feet closely at all times.

That would be the first, lower, peak. They do not really have names, the whole collection of peaks is called Yongmunsan, which is suspiciously similar to the mountain in Taipei city, Taiwan.

Despite rocks, I made good progress early, and thought I was ahead of the schedule I had dreamt up in my head. This is a shot of the way up to here from down there.

There are lots of flowers and lots of bugs along the trail. I engaged macro mode for this poorly focused shot.

Another look down.

There are lots of ways up, every few hundred metres another trail from somewhere seems to merge with the main trail. I highly recommend the Naver maps app if you plan on hiking here, it has every trail and topography info.

STANCE. Enough said. Actually, that entire wet area is sweat. Like I said, I had been making great progress early on.

Various cameras keep an eye on me in case I develop monkey pox during the day.

Occasionally, a staircase was added to the mix. I suffer vertigo with those steps you can see through. Also, that's not dust on my lens, its one of many flying bugs, fortunately they seem to be a non biting kind. There are also giant, slow, bumblebees.

I think, this is looking back, I had come over that peak earlier, and back down a bit again, so I can go up again.

Looking back from down again, over up from before, then down to the start. Also, another bug. Wait, is it in the same spot as the previous bug shot? Hmm, next shot has no bug.

Here is a group of people enjoying lunch, I suspect they came up from a different shorter trail, on close inspection there is a road that comes a fair way up the side of the mountain from the west. I hope you appreciate this important geographic information. The reason I suspect people came from other trails is there were a couple of sections that were crowded, then a couple of stretches where I saw not another person at all for an hour or two.

Head shot. I have a dead bug on my nose. He died from sunscreen intoxication. I firmly believe sunscreen is killing me.

I know I complain about the rocks, but this is beyond a joke. Some of these are huge, and wobble when you step on them. Perhaps today is a good day to die in a landslide.

As I approached the main peak, I got a bit confused. As you will see it has what looks like military installations on the top, which is common in Korea. According to my map, I had missed the summit, there were red flags and signs on the summit side of the trail. I therefore thought this area with lots of ribbons was the new unofficial summit and the actual summit was no longer accessible, I was wrong.

After walking past the summit, there is a big new staircase / ladder system to the top, and so, here is the view from the top. Lots of structures up here, presumably all brought in by helicopter.

Some sort of military base down there, possibly a missile defence system. I have climbed up on something to get this photo.

Official summit marker, only 1157 metres, but I had come from sea level. Actually my watch tells me total ascent today was just over 2000 metres which includes all the ups and downs.

Some more rocks and another hiker.

The descent down to the temple was long, but well marked. The markers however had often shifted in landslides. This was a bit concerning.

Nearer the bottom here, still boulders.

And now a nice stream to follow, but still boulders.

Finally, 100 metres from the end, a normal sort of a path!

I was glad to arrive back at the temple. If you look closely you can see those military structures on the mountain peak between the two peaks.

A bit more temple. This whole area seems to be a holiday area with camping grounds, sporting grounds, some sort of outdoor cinema, a sewer to play in.

Example of the well looked after grounds.

The street down to the bus stop was also very nice. And on the subject of the bus, for once it came almost immediately. Generally I hate buses, they never come when advertised.

Before getting to the bus stop, I sat and had an ice cream, and my only friend in Korea joined me.

Now for something hilarious. The Korean election continues, here is a bunch of 1's putting on a live performance for my bus as it arrives at the train station. Note there is a guy singing on the back of the truck while old folks dance in their number 1 outfits. I like to think this might be the politician singing himself, with his harem of old folks. I am changing my vote to a 1.

Here is a shot from the train station at Yongmun, a different town / city to the one I set out from this morning.