We love hiking. You experience nature, get exercise and because you achieve something: get somewhere, cover a distance, climb a summit. And as a gadget boy I love to track those achievements.
You might have seen already the listing of hikes we did on this trip. After almost one week in Seoul, we got on a bus to Sokcho in the Northeast. City life in Shanghai and Seoul was nice, but we needed some serious outdoor activity again.
For Saturday we planned a hike in Seoraksan National Park. We had chosen one of the longer routes over the highest peak, Daecheongbong. Mongolians would be shocked by Korea’s nature reserves. Clearly marked paths with indication of distances versus no recognizable trails and compass navigation. Wide areas closed to protect plants and wildlife vs do what you like whereever you like. Staffed shelters and poles with emergency phone numbers along the paths vs using the few employees to sell expensive tickets for neglected infrastructure like in Mongolia’s Bogd Khan Uul National Park.
The hike we chose started roughly on sea level and went up a beautiful river valley, with dense forest, large boulders in the crystal clear water of the river and lots of animals. It was cloudy and drizzled at times and very few people dared to hike, so we literally stumbled over snakes (if you can tell the species from the pic, let us know), racoon dog, woodpeckers, squirrels and chipmunks.
After a few hours and several bridges that criss-crossed the river inside the narrowing gorge the path became steeper. And thanks to my GPS you can count exactly how often river and path crossed on the map here. Most of the 1700m (!) we climbed that day was on the endless stairs up the hill that followed. I never saw that many steps on any trail in the Alps. And even though I’ve been on higher mointains before, I never climbed that high in one day. Fortunately my digital helper prepared a height profile that you can inspect here.
After some impressively cloudy views from the windy top, we hiked down at the other side, even steeper – but I guess you have seen that already in the statistics. Imagine walking down a giant stairway for 5km (after you walked uphill for 15km before), and you might get an idea what our knees felt like after we reached Osaek, the end point of the hike on the other side if the park. So, we certainly got our workout that day. But also beautiful views of the steep cliffs of Seoraksan, our first proper encounter with a snake, and a sense of achievement.
The Korean hikers we met on the trail gave us the impression that this is a nation that loves the great outdoors, and they are quite serious about it. Some told us they started at 5am (we met them in their way down when we just got started at 10am), others hiked up alone in the afternoon to stay in a shelter, and they all, without exception, looked like they just sprang from a catalogue if an outdoor outfitter. Some even made roast chicken on their special windproof camping stove on the summit. Compared to all these wandering outdoor catalogue models we felt rather underequipped, but I guess few of them hiked as far as we did that day. And I wonder if they tracked their hike as precisely as we did ;-)
If you have an iPhone yourself, you can check out Runkeeper and have it make GPS trails of your running, cycling, hiking or other sports. There is a free version of the app, though I got the paid one, cause it’s awesome.
