Bukhansan trek

A few weeks ago, I set out to climb a new mountain with 2 coworkers, Nola and Kelsey. You can see the peak in the photo above... the one WAY in the background! This mountain is located in a National Park just outside of Seoul. In fact, it is the world's most-visited National Park per square foot. Amazing fact, isn't it?

The leaves were absolutely beautiful during my THREE HOUR HIKE UP THE MOUNTAIN! Yes, you read that right - it was a THREE HOUR HIKE UP THE MOUNTAIN! That does not include the time going down, which was close to 2.5 hours! It was the most physically exhausting thing I've done in a long time, possibly ever.

There was not so much a marked path up the mountain as a place where there were fewer trees. I scrambled up rock piles for about 2.5 miles up the mountain, often coming across piles that seemed like a wall, not quite knowing how to get up them!

Luckily, the three of us were of about equal physical conditioning and needed about the same amount of breaks.... toward the end of the 2.5 miles, the breaks were quite frequent. We set visual goals for ourselves, though it seemed like we stopped every 10 steps!


After hiking 2.5 miles up the mountain, in about 2.75 hours, I was faced with about 6 flights of stairs that led to a fortress wall running along the top part of the mountain range. So, I hauled my cookies up these six flights of steps, exhausted, yet inspired that the wall MUST mean that I was close to the top. Deception! Once through the wall, I turned left to discover another 10 flights of stairs leading to a granite peak. Now, I'm not just talking about a small granite rock... No, it was a good half kilometer of granite peak until I could finally stop at the top! But, the best discovery was yet to come...


At the top of that last 10 flights of stairs, I could see that the physical challenge of climbing Baekundae (the highest peak in Bukhansan National Park) was not climbing for nearly THREE HOURS UP THE MOUNTAIN, scrambling over rocks, trying to find the path, then being confronted with about 16 flights of stairs. No, the challenge is AFTER all of that, when your muscles have been worked to the point of exhaustion, when you think you cannot take another step because your bum is screaming at you, your quads are calling you all sorts of names, and your knees could use a hot tub. The challenge is in the form of a granite peak and a metal cable attached... a granite peak that is so steep and is impossible to scale without using all of your strength to pull yourself up the metal cable using your arm muscles (that have been exhausted by climbing for THREE HOURS UP THE MOUNTAIN) for another half a kilometer!

It's amazing more people don't plummet to their death due to an inability to hold onto the cable. This was insane!



The exhiliration in getting to the top was completely worth all of the exhaustion, frustration, and challenge of the day. The feeling of being on top of the world, well... at least on top of Seoul, was wonderful!


It was a great place to eat lunch, which we all had been needing, wanting, craving, almost breaking down and eating before we actually got to the top. We huddled behind some rocks to try to get out of the COLD wind and ate our sandwiches.

The hike down was nearly as dangerous (if not more so in places) than the hike up... And, it took just about as long. We spent the walk down wondering how in the world we actually made it the entire way up, as the walk seemed to take forever!

Our legs no longer functioned as we wished. I think it was Nola that said her feet stopped going where she tried to put them. We were EXHAUSTED! Knees, ankles, quads, bums, feet... you name it, it was tired and screaming at us... using very bad language to call us mean names! The memory was worth every moment of agony, though!