Trail of the Lion King

I’ve not done very much hiking so far this year. Jen and I walked the last couple of sections of the Bukhansan Dulegil and there’s been the odd river walk on the way to a football game, but I haven’t been up a mountain since I went to Yongmunsan back in mid-January.

As I’m supposed to be going up Poland’s highest mountain in the summer when I’m over there for Euro 2012, I thought that it was about time to ease my legs back into it. Jen and I had been to Cheongdo to watch the bullfighting the previous day and when we had seen enough of that we got the train to Daegu. A taxi took us across the city to the Seobu bus terminal and from there we caught a bus to Haeinsa in the Gayasan National Park. The bus goes every forty minutes, costs 6,600 won and takes about an hour and a half.

Seobu bus terminal.

It was raining as we arrived at Chi-in village and we made for the nearest motel. There were a few of them around so I reckon that even in the height of the walking season it would be likely that you would find somewhere to stay.

Our place was ok, the main drawback being that not only would the outer door to the room not lock, it wouldn’t always stay closed. I wasn’t too bothered as it didn’t seem as if there was anyone else staying there. Later on Jen spotted a list at reception that not only showed which rooms were occupied, but how many people were in them. We had the lowest occupation rate with just the two of us, whilst other rooms had as many as eight people crammed into them.

That’s it on the left.

There were a few restaurants and we selected one that specialised in various produce from the surrounding hillsides. Radishes, ferns, bracken, surplus foliage from root vegetables, weeds, that sort of thing. There was an ungutted grilled fish and some soup with bits of tofu in it. On the plus side we got a pancake and a couple of beers with it.

It was quite cold in there but as we were the only customers we got to sit next to the stove. On top of the stove was an extremely large pot full of water. I wasn’t sure if they were heating it up to make us some tea or to bath their dog.

Just in case you wondered what a stove looks like.

Next morning the rain had stopped and it was a pretty good day for hiking.  We set off early in the direction of Haeinsa temple with the intention of walking past it and then onwards to the 1,430m Sangwangbong. It’s about five kilometres to the top and with Haeinsa being around six hundred metres above sea level, it’s a not too steep eight hundred metres or so ascent.

Haeinsa is famous amongst Buddhists for its temple which has a load of wooden printing blocks from the olden days. Jen has been there before and they made her peek through a gap in the wall to see them, so it’s maybe not the most tourist friendly of places. That didn’t seem to stop coachloads of them turning up though and by the time we reached Haeinsa it was already busy.

I’m not overly fussed about old wooden blocks and so we left them to those who were. The trail towards the summit was the quietest we’ve ever experienced. We spotted a monk out for a stroll early on and then after that we didn’t see anyone at all until we were within about twenty metres of the top. There’s an alternative route up from the Baengundong park entrance and most people must have been following that trail. We did think about going down that way but we didn’t know if we would be able to get a bus or not.

A monk.

Three hours after setting out we were on top of Sangwangbong. For a few minutes we were the only people up there before someone very handily turned up to take our photo.

It’s been a while since we had a summit photo.

There were decent views to the south with rows of mountain ranges disappearing into the distance.

I think I took this one a bit further down, but the view was similar.

The route was busier on the way down as we passed hiking groups and families who hadn’t made the early start that we had. Two hours later we were at the bottom and having a late lunch of beef and mushroom soup in a restaurant next to the bus stop.

Timetable for buses from Haeinsa.

Gayasan is another one of those places that I’d like to go back to, next time taking the route from Baengundong that goes past Yonggi Falls and then on to the 1,433m Chilbulbong peak, before descending via Sangwangbong to Haeinsa. It’s still only about ten kilometres in total and it looks as if the best way to do that one is to get off the Haeinsa bus a bit earlier at Gajo and then take a taxi to the Baengundong entrance.

And for what it’s worth, my legs knacked for days afterwards.

Yongmunsan is one of those mountains that is just outside of Seoul and ideal for a day’s hiking. Ideal that is if you can get out of bed on a morning. I’d planned to do this hike the previous Saturday but hadn’t adjusted properly to the time difference after my trip to the UK. Whilst I’d been waking up at around three every morning earlier in the week, luck would have it that I slept in until half past nine on the Saturday, which was a bit too late.

My second attempt was a little better. I’d been to Oman and back during the week, returning to Seoul the day before and had hoped that with the time difference there being only five hours rather than nine I’d wake up sometime around seven o’clock. Hoping isn’t really as good as an alarm clock though and after not waking until eightish, it was after nine before I left the apartment.

Yongmun is at the very end of the Jungang line and it took about two and a quarter hours from Yeoksam. I had a seat all the way and a book to read so didn’t mind the journey, particularly as the latter stages are above ground with views of some of the other mountains that I’d like to hike in the future. It’s only a 1,900 won fare as well which is about a quid.

I could have got all the way to Yongmunsan Resort for that 1,900 won fare if I’d been prepared to wait for the connecting bus that runs every half hour from the station, but as it was getting on towards lunchtime I took a 10,000 won taxi instead.

Yongmunsan Resort is likely to be quite a busy place in summer. There’s an amusement park, a camping ground, plenty of restaurants and a few small hotels. In January though, there wasn’t a great deal going on.

That's the big hill in the background.

I followed the road that leads to Yongmunsa Temple. It’s another one of those places that is apparently centuries old, but there is still construction work going on. It’s ages since the Japanese invaded and knocked it all down so maybe the monks are getting an extension to their Snooker Room. There is a great big Ginko tree outside the temple that is supposed to be over a thousand years old. It probably looks a bit more impressive when it has leaves on though.

That's still the big hill in the background.

I followed a path that went between the tree and the temple. A hundred metres or so further on I had a choice of following a path towards Sangwonsa or going directly to the main Yongmunsan peak. I headed straight on and the trail went upwards quite sharply, following the frozen stream. There weren’t many people hiking, or at least there weren’t too many on this particular route, although I suspect that most people would have started walking a little earlier than I did.

As I got higher there was more snow on the ground. It didn’t look too recent though.

Looking back in the direction that I'd just come from.

Progress was slow as there were some fairly slippery parts of the trail. The ice wasn’t thick enough to put chains or spikes on, so it was just a case of being careful. There were some quite steep sections as well where the ropes provided were a big help. After two and a half hours I’d only covered three of the four kilometres to the top and realised that I might not make it down again before dark if I tried to do the last kilometre. Yongmunsan is one of those mountains where you can’t get all the way to the 1,157m summit anyway as it’s fenced off to protect a load of satellite equipment, so not getting to the highest point possible wasn’t such a big deal.

I backtracked  to one of the lesser peaks and perched on a big rock to eat my cheese and crackers. I had a great view of the valley that I’d started from, some other hills in the distance and a bloke doing a bit of paragliding.

The photo doesn't really do it justice.

Further along the trail I took a different route downwards which eventually joined up with the route to Sangwonsa. It meandered back and forwards and was a lot less steep than the route I’d followed on the way up. It made the descent much easier than I’d anticipated and by the time I got back to Yongmunsan Resort I probably still had about an hour and a half to spare before it got dark.

I went up the blue route and came back down the yellow. I think.

I joined the queue of hikers waiting for the bus to the station and then got the subway back to Seoul. I think I’ll have another go at Yongmunsan as there is apparently a decent waterfall fifteen minutes or so beyond the main peak. I’ll just set off a little earlier next time.

The main event of this weekend was the second leg of the K-League play-off final between Jeonbuk and Ulsan. Jen and I had travelled down to Jeonju to watch it and with the game not taking place until the Sunday afternoon it meant that we could do some hiking the day before.

Jeonju is pretty well situated if you like spending time in the hills. We’d hiked in the nearby Moaksan Provincial Park a month earlier and Maisan Provincial Park isn’t too far east of the city. Maisan is famous for having a couple of peaks that are supposed to resemble horse ears. Rocks that are reputed to look like people, animals or bits of people or animals aren’t exactly uncommon over here but most of them just look like rocks to me. Still, rocks are good, even when they just look like rocks.

The other option was Daedunsan Provincial Park. It’s about an hour to the north of Jeonju and is probably somewhere that we could have tied in just as easily with a match in Daejeon as Jeonju.

Daedunsan map

Daedunsan’s advantage over Maisan though is that the hiking didn’t look as strenuous. Despite all of the walking that we’ve been doing on weekends I’ve gotten a little out of shape. I had a medical recently and from what I can gather too much of my body is made up of fat and not enough of it from muscles or bones. I’m not really sure what I can do to increase my bone content apart from maybe eat more chalk, but on this occasion the slightly easier hike seemed sensible.

We caught the bus from the Inter-City Bus Terminal at 9.40am. It was just as well that we didn’t miss it as the next one didn’t go until after 2pm. Daedunsan mustn’t be a particularly popular destination for people living in Jeonju as despite the fare being less than 6,000 won we were the only passengers on the bus. We picked up a couple of people on the way and arrived at Daedunsan, as expected, just over an hour later.

Daedunsan High Street

There are  a few hotels at the bottom of the hill and a row of shops selling mainly hiking gear and crappy souvenirs. There are also plenty of restaurants and food stalls, plus what appeared to be a couple of nightclubs. We bought a pair of cooked quail at one of the stalls to go with our lunch. You know as soon as you look at them that they will be more effort than they are worth to eat, but at 2,500 won a go I find it hard to walk past things like that.

Doctors would be impressed by the ratio of bones to everything else.

Despite our bus having been almost empty, the area around the shops was fairly busy. One of the attractions of Daedunsan is that it has a cable car that goes about three-quarters of the way to the top and so it’s a popular day out for people who don’t fancy hiking but are keen to combine quail and nightclubs with a trip up a hill. Despite my low ratio of muscles and bones to fat we didn’t bother with the cable car, at least not on the way up. I don’t mind saving my knees on the way down a hill but you don’t really get that sense of achievement if you’ve only done half the ascent by yourself. Besides, we’d just spent an hour on a bus, it was time for some fresh air.

Our route wasn’t too far away from the cable car, just closer to the ground and after about an hour we reached the point that the old grannies and small children had got to with a lot less effort. To give them something to see without the need for them to hike to the top, a suspension bridge had been built together with what I suppose you could describe as a ‘suspension staircase’.

The bridge enabled you to get near to where you had been 20 minutes earlier.

Neither of them were necessary, but had been built to allow people to go up in the cable car, cross the bridge, climb the steps and loop back to the cable car again. Fair enough I suppose.

Luckily it's one-way only.

After working our way around the single direction bridge and staircase we pushed on towards the 878m Macheondae peak. It was a lot steeper than I’d expected, so maybe I’d got this place and the horse ear park mixed up. Whilst most people seemed happy to return to the cable car without reaching the top, there were plenty who had decided to hike the final stage. They were rewarded at the summit with a shiny metal tower that looked as out of place as, well, a cable car and a couple of superfluous suspension bridges. I suppose that if your rocks don’t resemble equine extremities you have to jazz them somehow.

It blends in so well.

It was quite misty, so once again there wasn’t much of a view, although we were able to spot a couple who had found somewhere quiet to eat their lunch.

You can find the odd quiet spot if you try hard enough.

It took a while for us to get down to the cable car station. The rocks were slippery and after I had whacked my knee against a railing due to losing my footing I was more than happy to take the easy option of a ride down to the bottom. As part of my healthy eating regime we had some fried battered ginseng when we got there. It was ok, better than we expected and judging by the number of places selling it, pretty popular in Daedunsan. The area at the foot of the hill was just as busy as when we’d set off, this time with people selling acorns, chestnuts and mushrooms to the visitors who had built up appetites riding the cable car.

The lady on the right offered us what she said was a good deal on acorns.

Like a lot of places, Daedunsan is somewhere that we’ll probably go back to. There’s a route that misses out the bridge and staircase completely by following the ridge up one side to the peak and then continuing down the other side. I suspect that at the right time of year that trail would be virtually deserted.

There aren’t too many football games left this season, but the second leg of the National League Play-off Final was taking place in Ulsan on the Sunday and so Jen and I caught the KTX south on Friday night.

I’d only arrived back from Oman a few hours earlier. It had been a more interesting trip than normal as I’d had a spare day to have a look around Muscat. The area around the port is worth a wander, as is the old fortress. I’d nipped into the big mosque that they have as well.

Muscat Fortress

The highlight of my trip to the site in the middle of the desert was having camel for my tea. I’d mentioned to the Omanis on my last visit that I’d like to try it and they were surprisingly keen. Most of them hadn’t eaten camel meat since they were children, so I suspect that there was a bit of nostalgia on their part. They bought one that was fourteen months old, it cost about five hundred quid and it fed over forty of us. Some of it was cooked in a fire pit and as you would expect that had a smoky taste. Overall, the taste and texture weren’t too different from lamb, apart I assume from the hump. I was picking at pieces from a couple of plates, one of which had the skull and jawbone on it, the other a bit of leg, a couple of ribs and a gum, complete with holes where the teeth had passed through. I stuck to the ribs and leg, declining the gum and brains in order to leave room for a bit of cake afterwards.

There was more meat on the bones when it was first served.

The consequence of all the travelling (and possibly the Friday night red wine on the train) was that I didn’t wake up until ten o’clock on the Saturday morning in Ulsan. That’s a rare lie-in for me. As we had made plans to hike in the Gajisan Provincial Park that meant that we had to get a move on. We were staying near the bus station but struggled to find the stops for the buses 870 and 1713 that go to Gajisan. As time wore on we gave up and just got a taxi instead. It was a fair trek, taking half an hour and costing thirty thousand won. Gajisan is over to the south-west of Ulsan and it would have made more sense to have stayed in a hotel close to the out-of-town KTX station rather than heading into the city only to have to retrace our steps back to the countryside the next day.

The weather had been good in Ulsan, warm enough for me to put shorts on, but by the time we set off towards Seongnamsa Temple there was rain in the air and the temperature had started to drop.

Seongnamsa Temple

As we hadn’t started hiking until early afternoon we doubted that we would have time for the circular route that was shown on the map. Instead we decided to settle for the 1114m Sangunsan peak.

We went to the right.

We crossed a bridge just before the temple and made our way up a well-marked path that was a bit slippy underfoot. We discovered later that the route we had taken wasn’t the route that was shown on the map. Nevertheless, we gained height quite quickly. After an hour and three-quarters we joined a track that would take us to within a couple of hundred metres of the summit. This was easier going but it never seems as much fun to me if you are hiking on a track that cars can drive up. We reached the top another forty-five minutes or so later.

It was better weather when we set off.

Not many people had chosen to visit this peak, most of them had continued along the track towards some famous rock and the slightly higher Mt. Gaji. It was nice to get a summit area to ourselves for once in a while but the wind and the fog meant that there weren’t really any reasons to hang about for too long.

We took a different route back down, one which brought us out onto a road which wound its way down the mountainside. Whilst we were less likely to fall and it was a lot easier on the knees and ankles, it did add about seven kilometres to the hike. We passed a couple of restaurants that specialised in pheasant and rabbit and heard the howling from what were likely to be dog farms.

Pheasants upstairs, rabbits underneath.

Just before it got dark we made it back to the Seongnamsa area and stopped for a duck bulgogi. It was meant to serve four people I think, but the owner’s dog seemed happy to help us out by wolfing down as much raw duck meat as we’d feed him. He wasn’t quite as keen on the carrots.

Fewer jawbones than camel.

We might have struggled to get back to Ulsan afterwards but the fortunately the restaurant bloke called someone he knew to taxi us back to town. I think that if  we go back to hike the peak that we didn’t have time for, the sensible thing to do would be to just get a taxi straight from the KTX station to Seongnamsa. There are sufficient motels and spa hotels in the area to be reasonably sure of finding somewhere to stay.

Jeonbuk Motors had qualified for the Asian Champions League final and had been fortunate enough to be drawn at home. It’s a strange system, playing a one-off final at the stadium of one of the teams rather than a neutral venue. However, I’m not complaining as it meant that Jen and I could go to the game.

Kick-off wasn’t until seven in the evening and so we took advantage of the nearby Moaksan Provincial Park to do some hiking first. Moaksan is about twenty minutes and fifteen thousand won in a taxi from Jeonju bus terminal.

The street that leads to the start of the trail

We got there for about half past nine, had some mandu and gimbap for breakfast at a small cafe and were ready to go by ten. There are plenty of shops and restaurants at the entrance to the trails, although I didn’t see any hotels. I’d be surprised if there weren’t any though.

Moaksan map

The highest point in the park is Mt Moak at 793.5m. Quite why the half metre matters I don’t know. Possibly a neighbouring park has a hill that is only 793m high and Moaksan likes to highlight how much better its hill is. Anyway, there are three routes up Moaksan if you are starting from where we were. You can go straight up the valley or you can take a ridge route to the right or left. Most people were going straight ahead, so we went right. It’s slightly longer at 3.5km, but at that sort of distance it doesn’t really make much difference.

The views were obscured by trees and fog.

It was quite steep to start with, then we got a few stretches of reasonably flat trail followed by a couple of staircases. Two hours after setting off we were at the top. Or at least what we thought was the top. After staring into the fog for ten minutes and feeding a feral cat some of the left-over mandu that we’d saved for lunch we continued along the trail only to find the real summit a couple of minutes further along.

Nine out of ten feral cats prefer mandu

The actual peak was cluttered with military buildings and phone masts. Possibly some of the other people knew that it was there but didn’t think it was worth the effort.

At the top.

Our plan had been to descend via the back of the mountain but we took a wrong turning and ended up coming back down the ridge to the left instead. It was fairly steep, with some sections where you needed to hang on to a rope.

It's cheaper than building a staircase.

It took a couple of hours to make our way down to the bottom where we caught a bus from the car park back to Jeonju. I didn’t see a timetable so have no idea how frequently it runs. The seven kilometre walk that we did was ideal for a half day and our plan is to go back sometime when the visibility might be better and take the trail that we had thought we were taking this time.