Put on your boots, grab your hiking poles, and bring lots of water because we are going on a hike! I recently completed my first hike in Korea and it was a fun time. Gwangju, the city I live in, is conveniently located right by Mudeungsan National Park. Last weekend, a few friends and I decided to go on our first hike at Mudeungsan. We all planned on meeting there around 8 a.m. to give everyone time to catch a bus. I live on the opposite side of Gwangju from where Mudeungsan is so my bus ride took me a little over an hour to get there including transferring to another bus. The good thing was I was able to meet up with a friend on one of the buses so the time passed pretty quickly.
We arrived at the Jeungsimsa entrance of the park and met up with another friend there. However, a few minutes later we found out we had a problem; our other friend we were meeting accidentally went to the Wonhyo entrance… With all the problems I’ve had figuring the buses here, this really didn’t surprise me at all. It just gave us an unexpected twist to our day. After debating about how to meet up, we decided the three of us would just hike to our friend because the buses would take just as long.
As we were beginning our hike we stopped at the Information Center to get a trail map. I somehow was the one to get sent in to talk to the park ranger; it was a weird feeling for me because at home I’m usually the one who waits in the car while my mom and sister talk with the ranger and figure out where we’re going. Shoutout to the two best navigators around! The ranger had a huge map of the park on the wall and she told me about all these places we could go. I told her we had to get to our friend at Wonhyo and she pointed out a trail and said, “Easy. Simple.” Then she pointed at another trail we could hike from Wonhyo with the same, “Easy. Simple,” as before and I walked out of the Information Center with confidence that this was going to be a very relaxing day in nature.
Well, I soon learned that the park ranger’s idea of easy and simple varied quite
differently from mine. If I described our hike in two words they would be “hard” and “steep.” I’m sure that there are some easy and simple trails out there and I’m also positive that we probably took a wrong turn somewhere and missed them, because the minute we turned off the road leading into the park, the trail went straight up the mountain. It was all rocks too that we had to clamber up which added another level of steepness. I have never wished for switchbacks more in my entire life.
Okay, I’m definitely exaggerating a lot here, because it was not all that bad. It just surprised us all by how steep it got so quickly. The hike was very pretty. We were by a stream the whole time and it actually reminded me a lot of Missouri hikes. When we got to the top of that trail, we ended up on a road that looked out into the mountains. We had gained a pretty decent amount of elevation in just 45 minutes. Our trek got easier after that because we just walked down the road until we reached the Wonhyo entrance.
Finally, we were reunited with our long-lost friend after an hour and a half of hiking. Luckily, the area we were now in was very close to Wonhyo temple so we decided to check it out. The temple was beautiful! Secluded and peaceful, it looked out into the mountains and was the perfect place for a midday adventure. The colors were vibrant and bold, such a contrast to the monks’ gray robes, and incredibly gorgeous. When we were there the monks were leading a chant or prayer of some sort, so while we walked around we were accompanied by the sound of a drum and chanting. It was a very cool experience.
After our visit to the temple, we decided to continue on our hike to the Seoseokdaek rocks, the place the park ranger told me about. From where we were now the hike would only be 4.0 kilometers and we were excited about the prospect of the easy, simple hike it would be. I’m not sure why we still thought it would be easy and simple, but we were full of hope at the beginning of our second hike of the day.
The first 0.6 km were easy and simple; we enjoyed meandering our way along the trail,
pausing to translate the signs, and happy to be hiking all together at last. Then we took a right turn and the trail began to get steeper. And steeper. And didn’t stop being steep until
3.3 km laters when we reached the top of the mountain and realized we had hiked the highest peak of the entire park! Looking back, in some ways I’m glad we didn’t know where exactly we were hiking, because it would have been easy to lose motivation to get to the top, but since we were still holding onto the thought that it would get easier, we kept on chugging along.
And I’m glad we did, because it felt like such an accomplishment when we reached the top! We had an amazing view of Gwangju and were so proud of ourselves for hiking all the way to the top on our first hike in Korea. It took us a little over two hours to get to the peak and we gained about 1000 meters (3280 feet) in elevation along the way. One thing that I noticed when we were at the top was how everyone else had packed full-blown lunches. I’m not talking about sandwiches and snacks, I’m talking about ramyeon, side dishes, drinks. It was pretty impressive. Now I know that next time we hike we need to pack a lunch as well, because it will definitely be a full day adventure.
Hiking down was a bit more scarier than hiking up mainly because of the rocks we had to climb down. The whole
trail was rocks and it was a miracle no one got hurt going up or down. It was so much faster going down and the whole time I kept thinking, “Wow, I can’t believe we made it up there.” At the end of the day, the Health app on my phone said I had walked 12 miles (not sure how accurate that was) and climbed 277 flights of stairs (that seems more accurate).
All in all, it was a pretty great day. We definitely hiked more than intended since what was going to be an morning hike turned into an all day hike, but the view from the top was worth it. It was a good first hike in Korea and I’m thankful to have had great friends to hike it with.
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