We're Rambling Hikers

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I spent last weekend at Songnisan National Park in Cheongju. It was a welcome break from city life and a much needed opportunity to breathe some fresh air. It was also an example of why it’s a good idea to befriend some local people because I don’t think I’d have made it there on my own. It was well worth the 5am start on Saturday and the 4 hour drive!

Once we’d arrived, had breakfast and checked in to our Minbak (rented room) we started on the long walk up the mountain. Songnisan’s myriad trails are popular hikes and there were plenty of mad Korean rambling hikers on route to the heady thousand-metre-high peak. There was also an amusing sign at the bottom of the trail with diagrams showing how to stretch before walking the mountain. It exemplified the lack of knowledge or scientific backing for the Korean approach to exercise.

We chose to head for the highest peak - Munjangdae - so had a steep 1054m climb ahead of us. It was a fairly well marked path but was surprisingly treacherous; certainly more so than I’d anticipated. It took 2.5 hours to reach the top and the tough climb, along with the unexpected warm weather, meant that I could break sweat for the first time in months.

The park’s name translates as ‘mountains far from the ordinary world’ and in many ways I felt a world away from the manic last 6 months I’ve had in Incheon. It was pretty impressive viewing from the top, although it was just as much the accomplishment of making it there that made me smile. We stopped to take lots of pictures and have a snack before heading back down along an even more challenging route. It was a rum old journey back but a lot of fun; when I wasn’t slipping on ice, I was blundering across the rocky ground and pushing the lateral ligament complex of my left ankle to its absolute limit.

When we finally got to the bottom, we took in the park’s most famous attraction - the Beopjusa temple. Surrounded in the peaks of the national park, Beopjusa (which means ‘the temple where Buddhist teachings reside’) is still an active place of worship and religious study. It is watched over by a 33m-high bronze Buddah, apparently the tallest such figure in the world, who stands with his back to the west - the direction of his death. Anyway that’s about all I managed to remember about that and you can get the idea from the pictures below.

We went back to the Minbak for a barbeque style Korean dinner and a few beers before the most uncomfortable night’s sleep I’ve ever had. It was even worse than the time I had to share a bed with Adam Minns but even that couldn’t take the shine off of a great weekend.

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Photos

Photo 1
That's roughly where we're going.

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At the beginning when the ground was still flat.

This point, at the summit of Munjagdae, is where the Chungcheongbuk-Do province borders the Gyeongsangbuk-Do province. No Webber I did not make those names up.