…and boy was it good! I went rock climbing at Mt Songnisan Adventure School and ridge hiking along Joryungsan, Chungcheongbuk-do (about 3 hours south of Seoul).
Here’s the description of my weekend from the Adventure Korea website:
The first day, we will be trained climbing and rappel at the natural rock. Height will be 35 meters. 4 instructors Will take care of us so we are very safe there.
At night we can sit around the campfire and enjoy talking with friends under the stars while drinking a few drinks, and playing some drinking/bravery games
[I love the way 'drinking' is scheduled in!]
Here we are climbing up on the left and rappelling down on the right.
And here’s Kat and I geared up and ready to go. This weekend marked the beginning of winter I think, as it was freezing (it’s snowed a bit the last couple of evenings too)!
And here we are actually in action.
And again, on the assault course which we did after the climbing (and before our eagerly anticipated dinner). It was great fun, crawling through drains, swinging on tires and acting like big kids. Some of the others were a bit tired by this point, but we didn’t mind running around like maniacs as it actually kept us warm.
But we got warmer after dinner with the help of the bonfire and a couple of bottles of soju. It was very satisfying to see the wood burning that we’d carried back from the rock climbing. And even more satisfying to eat the yummy marshmallows and roasted pork that the Koreans cooked for us (even though we’d already had a more than adequate dinner).
This was taken just after one of our guides had chucked a can full of gasoline on there. Once the flames died down we used the thin branches we’d brought back from the forest to spit- roast our food. It really was cosy. In fact a spark landed on my head and I didn’t even realise until someone told me my hood was smouldering!
Fueled by soju, Kat and I decided to do the assault course once more. For some strange reason we couldn’t convince anyone else to join us. And even stranger, we found it far easier than when we were sober! No longer will I scorn those who insist that soju gives you energy.
However, it also gives you a terrible hangover so some of us were a bit worse for wear when we started our ridge hiking the next morning. A couple of people gave up within the first 20mins so they missed this wonderful view…
And this was just the beginning! We hiked the whole ridge…
…stopping for lunch at the highest point…
It was seriously amazing; the views, the icy wind, the rock faces where we had to use ropes to pull ourselves up with…and the sheer numbers of people on the mountain. In places where the path was particularly narrow we ended up in a bottleneck – only in Korea do you have to queue whilst hiking!
And talking of queuing, on the journey back I saw the craziest queuing system I have ever seen…
After 10mins of queuing in a very polite British way and having scores of Koreans bypass me to get to the cubicles first, I decided to play it tough and push in front of them. It worked so I was able to get back and enjoy the rest of the journey whilst watching Ocean’s Twelve on the tour bus.
It was such a great weekend I came straight back and booked another trip with Adventure Korea; a temple stay and waterfall hike. Can’t wait!
