Hiking Kumdansan and surrounding area

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Seeing as how I'm on vacation at the moment I have decided to spend a bit of time hiking and wandering around my local mountain (the famous Kumdansan - people come from all over Korea to check it out.... or so I heard!). I went there last week one day and got some pretty cool pictures, but I've also been up there today and it was SO much better! Why? Because there was snow!!!! I've found a new route which starts at the bus station. This requires a 10 minute bus journey from my house to the end of the line, and the old adjosshi driving the bus today was getting more and more concerned as the bus emptied out the closer we got, leaving just a lone foreigner on board! As we pulled up to the station he asked me "Odi-ga?" (translation: where are you going?), so I told him "Kumdansan" to which he replied "Ahhhhhh...." He let me off the bus and off I headed to the mountain.
The first 30 minutes were probably the most strenuous, as the uphill hike is fairly steep. However, there are plenty of places to stop and catch your breath, and today I was like a little kid whenver I saw the snow drifts getting bigger and bigger. I tried to cause avalanches! I wrote my name (in Korean) in the snow! I chugged from the bottle of soju I'd bought and scoffed choco-pies! It was great, and I wasn't even too cold at this point.
The best thing about this route is that it seems relatively unknown by the locals. I saw virtually no-one, which makes a big change from the 'commercial' route I'd tended to take prior to today. The few people I did see were full of smiles and "annyong-haseo"'s and all seemed genuinely pleased to see a strange looking foreign guy (me) on my way to the top.
After roughly an hour's worth of walking I stopped for some lunch. I'd gotten pretty high (as in high up, not high as in.... well, never mind) and was slightly peckish by this point. So I stopped and ate my Kimbap and a couple more choco-pies (for energy, obviously) in a nice spot with a killer view over the highway which heads south.
After lunch I put on an extra layer (it was getting pretty chilly by this point) and traipsed for another 50 minutes or so until I reached the top of Kumdansan! There appeared to be snow in the air, but I think it was just blowing off the mountain or trees, rather than actually coming down from the sky. Guy at the top tried to sell my some Maccoli (Korean rice wine) but I showed him my bottle of soju and indicated that I was well-stocked already. The walk down was very slippery in parts, and much of the pathway had turned into a mini ice-skating rink. Not too bad on the flat, but when its a steep path heading downwards its not so easy! However, my new boots really came into their own today and probably saved my neck a dozen or so times! I finished my bottle of soju at my favourite spot on the whole trail, a place which I personally feel has THE best view of Hanam. The sun was starting to set as I got nearer the bottom so I tried to snap a few pictures of it although unfortunately I was in amongst a bunch of trees at the time.
I got back home after popping into the supermarket for some dinner ingrediants, and will heading off to cook chicken and oyster sauce with stir fried rice just as soon as I finish this off!

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