Right now my calves are so tired and my quads are in pain! I will sleep well tonight. I hiked most of the way up the tallest peak in Bukhansan National Park - the peak itself is called Bukhansan (the above is not actually the peak, it is just the only picture I got before my camera ran out of battery). I didn't really know what I was getting into, but I'm glad I went. It was interesting to see a Korean national park. Seoul is surrounded by pretty mountains that look like eruptions of green with stone peaks, and this park encompasses some of these mountains. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of battery after my first couple of pictures, but here's the website for the park:
http://npa.or.kr/bukhan/eng/npa/intro.htm
Two women from my trip were going to do this hike, and I decided to join them. They were thinking it was going to be 3 or 4 hours of trails, and we'd be back by lunch. While the hike was only 4.1 km, it was incredibly steep, and ended up being 6 hours of strenuous hiking. We sweat a lot. It was even more strenuous than hiking Yosemite Falls, which, up until today, was my hardest hike to date. Plus, it had rained last night, so the dirt and granite rocks were kind of slick. I was really careful with every step, remembering how I sprained my ankle a couple of summers ago climbing Mt. Cardigan in NH. I'm glad to have mad eit down without any injuries! It was an exercise in taking it one careful step at a time.
We did have fun, though. You can reach this park by subway from downtown Seoul in 20 minutes! Amazing! As we got closer, more and more people got on the subway with serious hiking gear: hiking boots and wool socks, backpacks, walking sticks! I had a backpack, but my two hiking companions only had purses! We were all in running shoes, not hiking boots. We began to feel under-prepared. Once we were out of the subway, we took a short bus ride to the opening of the park. The bus driver asked a passenger to show us how to get to the start of the trails - very friendly, and kept on telling us how beautiful the mountain was and how much we would like it. We were the only foreigners to be seen the whole day, interestingly enough! Turns out that this park is a big destination for all the hikers of Seoul on the weekends (and there are many of them). Not that many (or any- besides us) westerners seemed to know about it. This man to whom the bus driver had assigned us insisted on walking with us, and he was very nice - showed us pictures of his daughter and wife on his cell phone. He also wanted to keep a fast pace, so eventually, he lost us. As we got closer to the peak, I was not feeling like my shoes had good enough traction, and it was STEEP, so I sat on a rock and waited while my two friends went up a little farther, and came back down when they would have had to scale rocks. While I sat for an hour near the side of the trail, a steady stream of Korean hikers (men, women, and children) hiked on by. All in hiking shoes and proper hiking gear! I ended up hiking with some middle aged women in big fluorescent visors further on the trail until I met my friends again. It was an exhausting hike, but beautiful.
Oh, I forgot to tell you about the food I got at the bottom of the mountain to eat for lunch! I wish I had taken a picture of it. It was called kimpa (sp?) and it is rice and vegetables rolled in seaweed, and then sliced up like sushi rolls. They put it in aluminum foil, and it was very transportable, like having a sandwich. Healthy, and delicious!
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