Gayasan National Park Gayasan National Park is a small national park within Korea but definitely should not be overlooked. Gayasan was the first park we visited during our Chuseok break. (which was a five day weekend for us, score!) By the way, Chuseok is essentially the Korean version of Thanksgiving. Anyway, we had no idea what was in store for us at this beautiful national park, but right off the bat, we were not disappointed! We started off from the Tosingol Information Center. This parking lot is not far from the major temple within the park. Haeinsa Temple is a gorgeous temple that was founded in 802. We spent way more time there than we thought we would. When we first approached the temple grounds, we were greeted by a long, ascending pathway lined with large, over-grown trees. This specific temple is known for holding the Tripitakas. The Tripitakas are planks of wood measuring 70 cm long, 24 cm wide, and 2.8 cm thick. Each Tripitaka weighs 3.25 kg. Carved into each Tripitaka are 23 lines with 14 Chinese characters on each line. The Tripitakas are the world’s oldest intact version of the Buddhist cannon with NO KNOWN ERRORS. In total, there are 81,350 wooden planks! It was insane! After wandering around the temple grounds for quite some time, we started our hike up to the summit. The hiking courses at Gayasan are limited, but they should not be overlooked! It is quite a climb up! We followed a stream for a while and then just kept continuing our climb up! As we were climbing we kept seeing warning signs for bears. Of course, we didn’t see any bears, but from some research we did, a few years back, Korea did a big project to help bring back the small bears that were slowly disappearing. From what we read, these specific bears mainly inhabit the Jirisan and Gayasan area, with more bears in the Jirisan area. I was happy to read the small bears are making a comeback. Way to go little bear! FIGHTING! Anyway, we finally made it to Sangwangbong and Chilbulbong and we were not disappointed by the views. This trail was an out and back so after a few pictures we just turned around and went back down the mountain. OOOOhhh, it’s also worth mentioning that this park had a check-in point you had to reach before noon or 1PM. That seemed really odd to us since it is such a small mountain, but we think since the temple draws so many tourists, they don’t want people who don’t hike a lot, going up the mountain too late in the day. Seoraksan National Park Seoraksan National Park is the crème de la crème of the Korean national parks. It is absolutely stunning. It also has the hardest hike that we had heard about in Korea. In English, this hike is called Dinosaur Ridge (Korean=Gongnyongnuenseon), because the ridgeline of the mountains go up, down, up, down, up, down…..and it looks like a dinosaur’s back! It is estimated that the hike will take anywhere from 12-14 hours. Now, it was still Chuseok break, and this was the only time we would be able to do this hike before we returned home to Seattle. Seoraksan is all the way on the east side of the country, and getting there early enough in the morning to finish Dinosaur Ridge in a day trip was impossible. So, Casey found an awesome hotel right next to the trailhead and we drove up the day before Chuseok so we could do this hike on the actual Chuseok day (we heard this hike could get pretty crowded, so we figured we would try it on Korea’s biggest family holiday, maybe people would be at home instead of the mountains, and we were right!). We arrived at the hotel and quickly dropped off our stuff then made our way to the entrance of the park so we could find the trailhead while there was still light. We were going to have to start our hike between 4-5 AM (with the trailhead opening at 3AM), so we could finish while there was still daylight. We found the trailhead, snapped a few photos, and then went back to our hotel to eat and get ready for our epic hike! We left the hotel room around 4:45 AM and arrived at the actual trailhead around 5:30AM (we walked this). We had our headlights on and we started the straight climb up. We ran into about 3 or 4 other hikers on the first climb and that was it! It was quickly getting light outside and we took off our headlamps about half way up the first ascent. While we were stopped we turned around and saw draw dropping views of the upcoming hike. We continued up and along a ridge (where we saw a woodpecker!) and we came across an important intersection. Here is where we could go off the backside or continue on with Dinosaur Ridge. The decision was a no brainer! We continued onward! Here is where we started the 5 kilometers of ups and downs, ups and downs. It was estimated by the park service that this portion of the hike would take us 4.5 hours. I think we did it a little faster than 4.5 hours, but we were hustling. Anyway, it was actually really chilly where we were, we had light jackets, but really wished we had gloves. Considering it was still earlier morning (maybe 8 o’clock at this point) we were still optimistic that it was just going to get warmer. We kept chipping the kilometers away one by one and we were in really good spirits. We both had read blog after blog about how hard this course was, I think in our heads we both made it out to be like Mt. Everest, but I think we were pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t like Everest, it was just a really demanding hike. Don’t get me wrong, this course was hard (and I think it would have been even harder if you did the hike the opposite way that we did it), but it was totally doable if you were in pretty good hiking shape. This hike is just a lot of time on your feet, and a lot of climbing and descending. We came across everything in this hike; rock scrambles and ropes to get over all the peaks, but reaching each peak felt awesome and the views just kept getting better! We were closing in on the final 1.5 kilometer stretch of the actual ridge (we still had a lot more hiking) and we still had a clear day! It was the best day for this hike. We started to run into people at this point doing the hike in the opposite direction. We exchanged quick greetings and continued on our way where we finally reached the intersection for Huiungak Shelter! We had a quick 1.4 kilometers to the next shelter (Yangpok Shelter) and then after that there was this awesome boardwalk/ nice trail kind of thing for 3.5 kilometers! We followed a stream all the way back into the main road. The water was so clear, and our legs were so tired, but we were on a high and couldn’t believe we had finished the hike! I think we finished the hike somewhere between 10-11 hours, so not too bad! We quickly started our car ride back home (after stopping for a green tea latte) and we were just amazed by the amount of traffic heading into Seoul from the south. It was insane, thankfully we were going through Seoul from the north, so it was not that bad, but a word of warning, during Chuseok be careful going south because the traffic coming back north during that holiday is crazy. Danyang The next day we had a little later of a start but we just wanted to do some sightseeing in the Danyang area. Our first stop was an awesome caved called Gosu Cave. It was a mile deep and really really tall at points! I have never seen anything like it! We took picture after picture and slowly walked through the cave with everybody else. Oh, and as a bonus, we found one of the hiking scarfs we needed; the Seobaeksan map hiking scarf! We couldn’t find it during our hike, so we ended up going into a national park office at Seobaeksan and asking if we could buy one there. They ended up giving us a promo scarf, which we gladly accepted and thought that was the best we would get. Next we’d decided to go see two of the Eight Scenic Views of Danyang. We first went to Dodamsambong Peak which is actually three rocks that have withstood the test of time and are just kind of chilling in the river. There is a story behind the rocks, so if you want click on the link above to read about it. Otherwise, just enjoy the pictures :) We ventured a little further down the river where we saw the second scenic view called Seongmun. It was actually a really large arch all made of one stone. Nothing super impressive but neat to see. We decided our time in Danyang was done, but as we were looking at a map and we realized how close we were to Taebaeksan. Now, this is important because this was one of the national parks we had hiked not to long ago, AND we didn’t get a hiking map scarf from it (GASP!). We could not find a shop that sold one. Our goal was to try to get a hiking map scarfs from all 22 parks, and this was one of the few we didn’t get. Casey thought he remembered an area we drove by that may have sold these coveted scarfs, and we decided to make the hour drive northeast and see what we could find. Thank god we did, because we found our scarf! Chaeseokgang Cliffs For our last day of Chuseok we decided to go down and see the Chaeseokgang Cliffs which are conveniently located in Byeonsanbando National Park (which we didn’t have a scarf for!) Once we arrived at the park we quickly found the hiking scarf and made our way over to the cliffs. They were really neat to see. We could see the layers and layers of rocks, and being right next to the ocean was a special treat. Oh, and we actually headed to another marine national park called Taean National Park to grab a hiking scarf we missed (this was actually our first national park hike!). We couldn’t find the map scarf , but the National Park office gladly gave us one from their promo collection, so that is the one and only hiking scarf we have from that park! Wow! Only two more national parks to go before we can say we have been to all 22! SOOOOOOOO CLOSE! That's it for now! Chuseok was great and we will never forget it! This posts song is from IU and its called BBIBBI. Enjoy!
0 Comments
|
Archives
April 2022
Categories
All
|