Fall is here which means a trip to Naejangsan National Park. Naejangsan is one of the most popular places in Korea to see fall foliage so I knew that I had to visit the park while I could. Although it was a bit late for the peak foliage viewing, I was still hoping some of the leaves remained on trees as I’ve heard so much about how pretty it is.
Naejangsan is not that far from Gwangju which meant I was able to make it a day trip. A friend of mine also wanted to see the leaves so we made a plan to go last weekend. As it would require us to take two buses, one to get to Jeongeup, the city closest to Naejangsan, and another to get from Jeongeup to the park, my friend and I decided to leave early to have plenty of time for hiking. Korea had other plans for us as our 8:35 a.m. bus never arrived… It has been the only bus that has not been on time in the three months I’ve lived in Korea and it seems to be a rare occurrence. When I told my co-teacher about it later, she was shocked and said that never happened. However, our bus never showed up, so we decided to just wait for the next bus at 10:25 since we really wanted to see Naejangsan in the fall. It was a bit of a bummer, but we decided to just shorten our hike.
Our 10:25 bus rolled up right on time, and we arrived to Jeongeup around 11:20. We found the bus stop for the bus that would take us to the park, but it didn’t have an arrival time listed. We knew that the park could get pretty busy in the fall and we were probably going to run into some traffic when we got near the entrance of the park delaying us even further, so we decided to splurge on a taxi. It was about a thirty minute taxi ride from Jeongeup to the restaurant/shopping area at the entrance of the park. Our taxi driver was really nice and pointed out the sights of Jeongeup on our way. Once we got closer to the entrance we did hit some traffic, but our taxi driver said it wasn’t that bad at all. I think we got really lucky.
We were dropped off just outside the entrance of the park; there were many restaurants, shops and so many people! As we walked towards the park, there were tents lined up along the river where people were eating and watching performances of people singing and dancing. It was a very fun, festive atmosphere.
The entrance fee to the park was only 4,000 KRW ($3.39). That’s the only entrance fee I’ve had to pay at a national park in Korea so far and I was surprised at how inexpensive it was. After the entrance, we could’ve taken a bus further into the park, but as we’d been sitting around all morning, we continued to walk along the river. And I’m so glad we did because some of the prettiest trees we saw all day lined the road we walked on. There were tons of people on that trail posing for pictures with the trees and it was cool to see so many other people enjoying the foliage too.
Naejangsan is a fairly small park and its most well-known trail is a loop that contains eight peaks. The good thing about the loop is that it has many trails that branch off it leading back down the mountain which means you can always end your hike early if you need to. This was ideal for us since we had such a late start to our day.
We began hiking towards Janggunbong Peak which was 696 meters (2,283 feet). The hike started with an easy stroll through the woods, but then the climb began. It hit us both hard, but luckily there weren’t many other people on the trail allowing us to take all the breaks we needed. We hiked up 1.1 kilometers and reached Yungunchi Ridge. From there we had another kilometer to go to reach the peak, but it got fairly easy since we gained so much altitude during that first kilometer.
Although it wasn’t as steep, the trail narrowed drastically and became rocky and a bit precarious at times. It was hard to see the trail with the abundance of fallen leaves and the rainfall from the previous week had made the trail muddy and slippery–two things you don’t want your trail to be when you’re that high up. However, the view from the peak was great! We stopped for a snack at the top and scoped out the next leg of the trail. It was one more kilometer to the next peak; since it was already getting late, we agreed to hike to one more peak and then go to the bottom from there.
Yeonjabong Peak was our next destination. At 675 meters (2,215 feet) it was a bit shorter than Janggunbong. The trail from Janggunbong Peak to Yeonjabong Peak was my favorite. We were out of the woods and both sides of the trail were open. We had a clear view of the mountains on either side of us and this is where we could see some of the colors of the leaves still left on the trees. The trail got considerably rockier and there were many times where there were railings to prevent people from falling as well as give you something to pull yourself up the rocks.
When we got to the peak, there were several other people there all enjoying the view or eating a snack. We ate lunch and spent some time relaxing at the top before making our way down. Going down made me grateful we hadn’t come up that way; it was incredibly steep and even muddier than the trail we’d been on before. It was also highly trafficked because there was a cable car that dropped passengers off only .3 kilometers from the peak meaning that many people hiked up to the peak and back. As we were walking down, I was surprised that we didn’t see anyone wipe out (more like I’m surprised I didn’t wipe out) down the muddy trail, but we made it to the bottom safely.
At the bottom, the trail led us directly to Naejansa temple. The hermitage had the most buildings I’ve seen so far and it was in an ideal location. It was surrounded by mountains and just seemed so peaceful.
After exploring the temple we started our trek back to the entrance, enjoying the beautiful leaves as we went. We must have timed our exit just right, because as we reached the restaurant/shopping area we saw our bus getting ready to leave. We were able to catch it and ride back into Jeongeup without any problems. We also got lucky with our bus ride home as we were able to get tickets for the bus leaving twenty minutes after arriving at the terminal. We made it back to Gwangju around 7 p.m. For a day that started so chaotically it sure did end smoothly.
Overall, Naejangsan was a beautiful national park. The trees were gorgeous, although I think if we’d come the weekend before we would have seen them at their peak. However, I’m still grateful we were able to make it there and see what we could with our crazy morning. Now, I just need to find a time to go back and hike all eight peaks!
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