Dinosaurs, Chipmunks, bathing angels, and soggy shoes

A few weekends ago, I went on a hike in a Seoraksan national park.  It has some very famous hiking and extraordinarily picturesque views. 

It was an organized trip.  You pay $71 and you get roundtrip on a bus, one night in a hotel, and a couple meals.   There was supposed to be a zipline involved after the hike on Sunday, but it was rained out.  so I was actually refunded $11.  Which brought the total down to $60.  A bargin to be sure.  To do that by myself would cost the same amount of money, but I'd also have to deal with all the organizing of finding transport, hotel, food, etc.  So this made a lot more sense.  Plus I met all sorts of great people.  A lot of Brits and Aussies.  So of course there was sarcasm aplenty.  

We board a bus at 11:45 pm friday night.  Then they drop you off at the trailhead at 3:00 am Sat.  The hike is supposed to take 9 hours for the short one and they have the epic "Dinosaur Ridge" hike that takes you on an extra 8 km detour..  that one takes 13 hours.   Apparently if you tell Korean hikers that you've hiked that trail they will pat you on the back and you can join some special club.  

 Rain was forecast for the entire weekend, so many of the other teachers from my school bailed.   Rain jackets, waterproofs, and flashlights were a definite requirement.  I only have a jacket so I brought that, and a removable hood from another rain jacket to clip to my ball cap.  I assumed that I would just get wet legs and feet, and that I would just have to deal with that.  

I had originally planned on doing the Dinosaur Ridge trail or as I was mistakenly calling it all weekend,  the Dragon's Back.  I like my name better.  

Couldn't sleep on the bus.  I tried, but it wasn't happening. 

3:00 am  

Disembark,  the tour organizer has huge American sized Costco muffins for us to charge up on,  and I had my waterproof backpack full of homemade gorp, a couple liters of water/Pocari Sweat (Korean Gatorade)  and a few cans of coffee for caffeine, which was probably a great thing.  

This is what the hiking was like for the first couple hours until the sun came up.  Headlamps, granite rocks, and metal stair cases in the rain.  The stair cases were mostly covered in that tire carpet stuff that you see in entryways.  (see the lower left of the pic below)

Korean mountains tend to be so highly trafficked that they make the trails  very well, so as to prevent erosion and also because their anal and industrious.  

HIker's flashlights on the trail at 3:00am

I started a good 10 or 15 minutes after the first party set out, with a group being led by a Californian/Fort Collinian/Korean guy named Jameson Henkel and his girl friend.  Good guy,  big ironic mustache and we were wearing basically the same rain jacket so we instantly started talking.  As the first hour or so rolled on we all got to know each other in the group,  I met a gal named Rainbow Ross (given name) whom I had sat across from on the bus, a guy named Aaron McGregor, an Aussie that instantly liked, and a guy named Josh,  who as it turns out is from Roseville originally, used to work at the Home Depot at the Quarry mall (the one that is less than a mile from my old house in NE MPLS, and so he latched on to me instantly.   

 Josh instantly annoyed me.  I like my swear words as much as the next guy, but HOLY  *&$#,  this guy used the ol' effinheimer even more than me.  And his voice.... he had a booming voice.  When I say booming,  I mean BOOOMING.  He's one of these guys who has a voice that is just naturally loud, and whose whisper would come out at the level of a normal persons inside voice.   His body acts like that of an cello or acoustic guitar.  You could hear this guy over the rain beating down on your rain hood, over the crunching and squeaking of your wet feet, and over the waterfall/river that although we couldn't see, was clearly not far to our right.    He began talking to me at some point and I tried to be polite for a while, but I wasn't there to chat.  I wanted to hike in the dark and listen to the rain,  smell the ozone for once instead of the air pollution of Seoul,  and just generally commune with nature.  

I don't know what this guy was thinking.  He had forgotten his poncho, and was already quite wet in his cotton shirt and shorts.  This is within the first hour...  And he was hiking in running shoes,  not trail running shoes, but street running shoes with no traction on them at all. 

I tried avoiding him by dropping back but my natural hiking pace is one of impatience and a desire to get there (wherever "there" is) in a hurry.  Anyone who's ever hiked with me can tell you that I don't know how to pace myself.   So that didn't work.  I decided that I would need to pass him at some point and get out ahead of him so as to be by myself.  Buddy system be damned,  I'll find some other buddies.  

Josh was carrying an extra 25 lbs and looked like he hadn't seen any serious exercise in quite a few years, so I figured that this wouldn't be a problem....  The one thing I didn't count on was his determination.   

The following pictures are the inspiration that had me determined to do this hike rain or shine.  With these in my head, I plowed ahead of everyone trying to get to the first peak by sun up.  At least that was my excuse to get away from Josh.  I wasn't going to let his constant talking ruin my hike.  

Amazing, no?

This is how Koreans make their hiking trails.  Lovely.   and I only saw about 1 km though the entire 10 hours that I was out there that was actually "trail".   I'll explain more later.

Unfortunately,  I didn't take the previous pictures.    I did take these however...

I passed maybe 80 Koreans from the a couple of the other tour buses that were there before us, and all of the other hikers from out tour.

So after climbing as fast as I could for 2 or 2 1/2 hours in the rain and dark, I got to the first peak.  I was the first one there.  And to my dismay, I was in the clouds.  not much to see.  But,  most of all I was rid of Josh, and that was the most important thing.  But I had no buddies, so I decided to wait and see who crested next and hike with them.  A couple from our tour came up next and I didn't want to be a third wheel, so I continued to wait.  Some Koreans showed up, and one of the other teachers from my school, but she had dropped her best friend so she wanted to wait for her, and I was starting to freeze.  I was getting nervous that Josh would show up before I could find a buddy.  And my fears were soon realized.  

At this point I had been waiting in the rain for 20 minutes and my body wasn't producing heat any more. So I needed to start moving, and Josh was right there with me.  

Damn.  

First peak.  5:30 am

I had passed this woman about 30 minutes before I took this shot.  She had ascended the mountain in bare feet, on wet granite in the dark.   Mind blown.  Later that day I saw a couple more hikers in bare feet.  It must be a thing that I'm unaware of.  But she did put on her boots at this point.  

So I hiked on with Josh.

There was nothing I could do,  he had no buddies, and neither did I, so I guess I was stuck.  

The split in the trail where you could choose to hike the extra difficult Dragon's Back or drop down into the valley and do the shorter (9 hour) river hike was coming up.  So I figured that Josh being completely soaked through would realize how wholly unprepared he was and take the short route.  So I set my mind that I would get him that far and then say anyonghikesio (goodbye).    

Now I should remind you that to this point we had hiked non stop up hill for 2 1/2 hours in the rain.  And the hiking was almost completely stairs.  This ridge was a bit of relief,  and it was the only "trail" that we saw all day.  The rest of the day was stairs.  Up,  and then down,  then up,  then down....  and down and down.  I started descending.  

I must have descended for at least 30 minutes.  And then I thought "Crap,  I think that intersection at the top of the hill was the spur onto the Dragon's Back."  I was mad at myself for missing the turn, and Josh was nowhere to be found so I kept going until I reached the bottom, where there was a large group camp with outhouses.  There I found 30 or so Koreans getting on with their day, carbing up for the day,  and generally getting ready to set out for the Dragon's Back or where ever they were going.  

I pondered the trail map that was posted on a tree and got very confused, until a kindly gentleman stepped out of the shelter and asked me where I was heading.  I replied "I'm not sure."  I sort of knew where I was supposed to end up but the map looked completely different than the last one that I had consulted 4 or 5 hours ago at the trailhead in the dark and rain.  So I explained to him that I was planning on hiking the Dragon's Back,  which of course meant nothing to him because it was actually called Dinosaur Ridge.  I explained that it was supposed to be the most famous section of hiking trail in these here woods, and he knew right away what I was talking about and said the name in Korean, and I then recognized the name.  

But I still couldn't decipher the map until he pointed at the exit point that I knew I was supposed to meet the bus at, and I then noticed the north was actually pointing down on this map for some reason.   There was no reason for this either.  There was no obvious graphic advantage to doing so.  The other map had north facing up.  Then the man pointed out that as you look at the map that it orients you to the direction of the trail that passes through the camp.  AH HA!  So I was still on route to the Dinosaur Dragon's Back Ridge.   Very exciting news.  The intersection that I needed was just up the path a half K or so.   

The man asked if I was hiking alone, and I said that I was with a group but that I hadn't seen them in quite a while, and was just going to press on ahead by myself.  He then told me that the trail ahead was very technical and treacherous, and recommended highly that I wait here for my group.  So I said that that sounded like good advice and that I would do so.  When he disappeared back into the mob in the shelter, I decided to pretend like I was going to stick around and then slip away.  But another Korean hiker came along on the trail and told me that Josh was on his way..... Damn.  The hiker had sort of puzzled look on his face because as I told you before,  Josh was soaking wet in a cotton shirt and shorts, and no jacket or any other source of warmth.  Now it wasn't that cold out, maybe 65 or so, but as soon as your body stops producing heat and you're wet.  You'll feel cold no matter what. 

 So with this I decided that I should wait.  I passed the time trying to take pictures of the chipmunks who were clearly accustomed to eating from backpacker's hands.  At this point however I was starting to worry about my camera,  it was humid and I was getting the occasional drop on it here or there, and I started to worry that  some of the moisture would start to find its way into the inner workings of the camera.  And this is why you won't find too many more shots in this blog.  I would only take my camera out in misty conditions.  But that was even too much in the end.....  I'll let the hang.   

Chipmunks are hard to photograph,  I was using the automatic sports mode on my camera which is made to capture the quick movements of children and puppies.  But I must have done something wrong,  because here's what I ended up with.

Kind of a Where's Waldo in some cases.  That is assuming of course that the little buggers didn't completely jump out of the shot completely before I got a snap.

So in the end I got a couple decent ones.   Once while I was squatting down to try to shoot one, another snuck up and sniffed my butt.  It kind of tickled a little.  

So eventually Josh showed up...   with an umbrella.  

"Where'd you get that?" 

"Some Korean guy gave it to me."

If I haven't said it before, I'm saying it now,  Koreans can be some of the kindest well meaning people that I've ever met.  That is of course when their not fall down stupidassed drunk and passed out in the train stations. Then they're just beligerent, and funny.  

Anyways,  Josh rested and used the outhouse, and we set off.  He was hiking sopping wet, with an umbrella, at this point it made no difference, but it looked reasonably responsible.  I made him eat even though he claimed he wasn't hungry.  I continued to subtly hint that if I were him I wouldn't continue on with the long hike an bail for the less taxing and less time consuming river hike.  I explained that we were at about the 2/5ths point of the long hike or a little over the 1/2 way point of the short hike so we paused again at the Dragon's Spur, I wanted him to assess his condition and decide that he was going to hike the river trail.   

Nothing doing.  His mind was set. 

I don't know for sure, but I think that his decision may have been influenced by the huge sign at the fork in the trail that showed the image of a twisted metal stair and bridge collapsed into the raging river below.  It seemed to be indicating that the metal catwalks that you'd be walking on if you did the river hike could be out or collapse under too much weight.   I'm not sure what it said exactly but it was clearly a warning of some kind.

   

After a half a K we ran into what was going to become a major theme for the next 3 hours or so....

This was the first ascent of many.   What you're looking at here is inch dia. braided cable surrounded in rope, bolted to the rock face, and fed through standoffs.   I actually found it to be a welcome relief from the constant stair climbing that we'd been doing all day to this point.  Josh had a different view on the subject.  

One of the easier descents.

Sometimes along a ridge we would be blasted by rain and wind being funneled up some unseen valley.  As shown here by these trees.  However most of the time we were sheltered enough that it was your standard drizzle/rain situation.






At this point I was had settled it in my mind that I was not going to try to ditch Josh any more.  I'd have to be a severely heartless, irresponsible bastard to do that to any human being at this point.  So we got to know each other a little better.  


Josh loves music,  he's a guitarist, and part time drummer.  We actually had a lot in common in the area of rock n roll tastes.  We discussed Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, and how interesting it was that an unusual proportion of the world's most influential guitar gods are lefties.  And also how that seems to flow into the art world in general.  We discussed politics, and general social ills.  


I found out a lot about his life.  He grew up in broken home.  His mother was a nurse/social worker and his father from what I can tell wasn't much more than a drunken Souix who would tell Josh that he was just lucky to even know who his father was.  They had been divorced for quite a while.  Josh's mother was a good woman who works with some of the most destitute people in the Cities and  his brother is in and out of rehab on a regular basis.  


His father would, in an attempt to do right by his people, let other Souix tribe members who were having trouble staying on their feet crash with them while Josh was growing up.   He told stories of these guys stealing stuff from around the house to sell for drugs, and them huffing spray paint in the garage.  


I really started understand Josh.  I could in no way relate to him, but he completely changed the way that I saw him.  He changed in my eyes from a person to be avoided to a person to be admired.  He was the most optimistic, openminded, "glass half full", "make lemonade" person I've ever met.  Sure he was maladjusted in many ways, he would tell you as much himself.  But this guy's ability, and determination to make life good for himself, and to be a positive person in the world made me completely ashamed of myself and of my attempts to ditch him on the side of a mountain in the rain.  


He had decided that his heritage was one of toughness and communing with nature, so even though he was cold, wet and in pain and just huffing and puffing along he kept up a great attitude and was thankful that I was checking on him.

Standard trail along the D.D.R.B

Yet another standard trail shot along the D.D.R.B.

As close as I got to a beautiful mountain panorama. 

Or maybe this one is.  You decide.

The man on the right in the blue coat and green bag was photographing Korean Edelweiss.  He said that it was rare, and unique to Korea.

So, enough on Josh.  We were a team now.   We hauled ourselves over wall after wall.  The total distance for this hike couldn't have been any more that 16 miles.  But the terrain was such that  every foot you took forward was well earned.     I wish I could have documented it a little better, but I was at this point a little worried for my camera's wellbeing.

It was full-on raining now,  and descended off the mountain for a couple hours.  It was only a couple hours because I would hike for 10 minutes , then pause until Josh's umbrella became visible.  I'd yell to see that he was coming along alright, and see if he needed anything to eat or drink.  


The Korean guys and their wives were amazing descenders, they barely looked where they wer stepping, and didn't usually use their hiking poles.  and instead of stepping,  pausing to look for they flattest piece of granite to place your foot on so as not to slip and break an elbow or vertebrae, they just bound down these slick trails as though it were a gradual asphalt path.  I think they're half mountain goat but I couldn't prove that because, because their legs were in  in pants, and they were wearing boots to hide their hooves.    

A nice Korean took this for me, although he didn't try very hard to keep my camera from getting wet, even though I gave him a bag to keep over it.

At about the .5 km mark there was a spur trail that led to a cave.  I'd seen the reference to it on the map, but the map hadn't mentioned that it was also a Buddhist temple.  So even with 10 hours and somewhere around 16 miles, I decided to hike another 3/4 of a mile up a cliff face to see this cave.  Josh and I finally parted ways.  

I wish I could have photographed the stairs but it was raining too hard.  Diamond plate stairs that were out of level in two different directions.  The supports of the stairs seemed somehow incomplete but the catwalks and stairs didn't wiggle too much, so I climbed.  Holding tightly onto the railing.  The image of the cautionary sign I saw at the beginning of the D.D.R.B.  was always in my head.  The stairs were on a steep rockface and switchbacked a few times.  As you get higher all you can see is fog, and some of the stairs both ahead, and behind.  All you can hear is the raging river in the valley, and the wind in the hidden trees, and the rain on your hood and metal stairs.  

When I got to the cave I found about 15 college age students in cheap ponchos, and a couple scientists.  One from Warsaw, Poland.  And the other was from somewhere in Korea.  His wife turned out to be in charge of an English dept at a college.  I should have hit her up for a job, but I know that I'm not yet qualified, to teach at that level,  plus I was well sleep deprived and running on a lot of adrenaline at this point.  The Polander was in the country as a visiting professor.  He was hilarious.  He thought that it would be a good idea if we Mary Poppinsed it back into the valley.  I was willing to watch him as he showed us how it was done.

This carved trough channeled natural spring water from the
 top of the mountain into this basin for drinking water for the
monks who live here as well as the visitors. 

The view into the bottomless abyss.

I followed the scientists and the nice English professor to the trailhead.  There was a mountain and large rock called (phonetically spelled)  Beesandae.  It translates to something like "where angels bathe".  And I must admit the river and stone faces coming out of it were gorgeous,  and I told them that if I were an angel, I'd bathe there.   They were in no hurry, but I thought my bus was leaving from the parking lot which I found out was another half hour walk from here along the river, so I said goodbye, and started hiking fast.  


We were exiting the trail at a different place ahan we had started from, so this was all new. Not that it would have mattered because we left in the dark.  


This trail was actually flat pea gravel and I made excellent time.  I met some other hikers from our tour along the path, and they said that we still had a couple hours, so I hiked with them.  A couple Brits, and an Aussie.  I got to know them and like them.  One of the Brits had done quite a bit of bike touring in Europe and Britain and so we chatted about that quite a while.    Then we got to the gate.      

This statue is bigger than the photo would tell you,
 it's probably just over 30 feet high.  I had to take the
picture from this angle because I was under a roof.

I hung out on the hot bus and changed clothes and hung out with Rainbow until we left for the hotel. 

We had to leave two people on the trail, and they had to take a cab to the hotel.  As it turned out, of the 20 or so people who claimed that they were going to hike the D.D.R.B.  only 4 of us actually did it.  One of them was having knee problems and his buddy was helping him down the mountain.  They got back to the hotel much later than us, and ended up sleeping in my room.  A nice couple of guys.  They turned out to be alright in the end.  


I don't want to sound like I'm bragging, but if I hadn't been stopping so much and taken the detour to the cave,  I would have beaten 75% of the hikers who hiked 4 or  5 fewer miles than I did.  But then again,  I am extremely impatient, and have no idea how to pace myself.  But you probably know that about me. 

The lobby of the motel where we ate burgers for supper.

This was the toilet in our room,  I couldn't figure out how they'd fix the
workings in the tank if you can't hardly get the lid off, let alone get
your arms into the tank to see what you were doing.

For some reason this little wad of paper was stuck to the ceiling of our room.
 No idea why.

We stayed up and drank and ate.  Eventually, I realized that I'd been up for 40 hours. 


 I needed sleep. 


 So I went back to the room tippsy from a combination of macali (Korean rice wine), adrenaline, and sleep deprivation.  Rainbow was asleep and had left the TV on.  I was asleep very quickly. 


The next day we were scheduled to do the second longest zipline in Asia, but the rain prevented that.  So instead we went to a fishing village, and William (the trip organizer) set up a grilled fish lunch for anyone who was interested.  It was raining hard, my quads were killing me so I stayed in the bus with at least half of the other folks.  We played card games and drank macali.  and I took some pictures under the overpass that our busses were parked under.

Overpass hangout.There was is some sort of restaurant set up in this tent thing.
These are fairly common in Korea,  people put up restaurants in
temporary structures along the side of the street or road or wherever makes sense.

A couple of cute, curious Korean kiddies.

Overpass decoration.  

An accidental over exposure that I kind of liked.

We got drunker and drunker,  next thing we knew we were on the road home.  William started up the Noribus.  (karaoke on a bus) and then things got out of control.  I think the bus trip from Seokcho to Seoul took somewhere between 4 and 6 hours.  Mostly because William made the buses pull over frequently so that none of the revelers would urinate on the bus.  Accidentally or on purpose.  






This is about all I remember of it.

Microphone with a hairnet

Aaron McGregor Noribonging into a cucumber.  That about sums up the trip home.