The title is a line that an old man said to my friends and I on Saturday while we were hiking. We had stopped to take a break before continuing the hike. I guess it was his way of encouraging us. Either way, we made it to the peak to show him
Fall in Korea!!
Saturday morning a few friends and I got on a bus and headed to Yeongam. It's a town a little over an hour away from Gwangju and is the entrance point to Wolchulsan National Park. Wolculsan is marked by mountain ranges mostly covered in enormous rock formations. Getting off the bus we were quite intimidated by the huge rocky mountains, thinking we were going to be rock climbers instead of leisure hikers. We squeezed into a taxi and drove to the entrance of the park. We walked up a little hill and found the entrance to the hike. We were met with the map of the park and some basic stretches they suggested doing, oh Korea. We began the hike thinking it was easier than the hike we did 2 weeks prior, despite hearing from various friends that the hike was "a bitch." We soon began to find out that they weren't lying to us. After about an hour and a half of hiking we made it to the Cloud Bridge. It had a phenomenal view of the surrounding areas! We even saw trees with beautiful fall leaves. The suspension bridge was pretty awesome and we took several pictures on it.
We decided to continuing hiking, but weren't sure if we really wanted to go to the top. Seeing as we were all pretty tired as it was. We kept on going though, pushing through the burning in the legs! As we got closer to the peak, it got a little scarier. From the bridge up we were climbing up steps like a ladder. It was incredibly steep and we were all but pulling ourselves up these steps. After making it up the steps there were rungs that we had to climb up to go further up to the peak. Being afraid of heights, it honestly was pretty terrifying. But I wanted to see the spectacular view for myself so I kept going!
I sat by a rock and enjoyed the view and peace at the top. Koreans would walk by and smile at me and say Annyong or ask where I was from. At one point a Korean lady opened up some food and offered it to me. It was really sweet, but I unfortunately had to decline the free food as she was offering apples and I'm severely allergic. After sitting at the top for quite some time we started our decent. We found a new way down and it was a lovely walk to the bottom. After we walked to the opening where we started we were greeted with claps from other hikers who had finished the hike, too. It was pretty cool.
A perfect Saturday spent with some pretty fantastic ladies.
Wolchusan is a pretty epic hike. I did it in my first year and failed to do it in my second (damned TGI:F) - I'm ready to tackle it again in 2011.
ReplyDeleteThe view from that bridge is spectacular and, in spring, there's some great places to sun yourself by the waterfall. :-)