Advertisement
Published: January 22nd 2007
Edit Blog Post
Let me start off by saying this is a combination entry, the first time I went Snowboarding I forgot my camera, and our company had a “Ski/Work Shop” weekend.
Well I finally did it, I went Snowboarding in Korea, and the first time was over New Years holiday, (Monday & Tuesday). I went with my boss, Scott, to a resort called Phoenix Park which is about 3 hours east of Seoul. The park had night skiing, so I snowboarded till 10:00pm Monday night. I must say it was not that bad, the snow was hard packed with some icy spots, and it was crowded but not what I was expecting. There were some differences compared to the ski resorts in the states. One big difference was the fact you can carry your snowboards while you sit on the lift chair and walk off when you get to the end. They allow this, I was told, because to many people were falling and causing big pill-ups, kind of like a “Warren Miller” greatest hits scene. The other thing that was very different and very annoying was the very loud music that is piped through speakers along all the ski runs, this
bugged me because I have spent so much time accumulating Warren Miller music for my Ipod and I was looking forward to listening to it, but no music was already provided, and I also needed to here the out-of-control skiers/snowboarders flying buy me.
Tuesday we got a full day pass, the first half of which was not to bad the snow was spring-like condition. After 1:00pm it went down hill (no pun intended) from there, the condition was….well….just scary. At one point Scott and I pulled of to the side of an easy run and must have watched at least a dozen collisions, saw a beginner snowboarder who must have watched a Warren Miller movie the day before and thought he could do jumps, we he did…except he jumped right into another rider, after seeing that I told Scott that as soon as I make it to the bottom that I was done for the day.
On January 19th - 20th our company had a ski/work outing at Hyundai Sungwoo ski resort. Friday was the ski/snowboard day; we had 17 people that were going to ski or snowboard. Seven went snowboarding, four for the very first time; the
rest went skiing, six for the very first time. I spent about 1 ½ hours trying to teach a first time Korean how to snowboarder how to ride, well he did very well on the bunny hill, basically walking up a green and have him go down, when he actually rode the lift up and tried to ride down he freaked and after 2 runs with him, he picked up as much as he could from me and I left him so I could get some runs in. There were some amusing sights, as always here, like the usage of the out-of-bounds netting as a means of stopping, albeit on purpose or just out-of-control stopping. I noticed the “Fear” in the first timers, crouched forward, ski poles sticking out like curb-feelers on a car, skies in the classic “A” or pie position, eyes as big as deer’s looking in the headlight of a car. And the reason they are looking like this is because they know that they do not know how to turn or stop.
After a day of skiing we retreated to our cabin, a very nice 5 bedroom, 2 bathroom cabin, the only down side to
Scott & Me again
Caught me with an "Athletic Nose", but check out the girl between us, ski tips crossed already. the cabin was the total lack of ANY furniture, so after a very strenuous day of skiing/snowboarding all we had was a nice hard floor to sleep on. Included in the package with the cabin was a meeting facility where we were served dinner and breakfast.
The next day we planed on going to Phoenix Park ski resort to do some more riding, but by the time we got there it was so crowded, we opted just to go home. I did notice the gondola lift line was about 45 minutes to an hour long. The ski runs looked like somebody stirred up an ant hill.
On a side bar, while I was eating dinner and resting Saturday night around 8:56pm my coach started to shake, and some items on my dining room table were moving about, and I thought “This does not seem normal”. The next morning I read on the Seoul Times on line and we had a 4.8 earthquake.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.238s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 10; qc: 64; dbt: 0.0905s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb