Funny story.
I signed up to go on a foliage tour yesterday. There were a few options for which park to visit (South Korea has so many!), and based on the photos, the description, and the time of year, I picked Daedunsan. The itinerary said that we would leave Seoul at 6:30 am, arrive at the mountain at 10, take a cable car up, have time to enjoy the views, walk down, eat lunch around 12:30, and depart at 2:30 pm. Sounded like a lovely day trip.
We arrived at Daedunsan, and the guide explained that once you take the cable car up, you have to cross a bridge and then walk up 120 steep steps to arrive at the top. Okay, I thought, no problem; I can do 120 steps.
So we took the cable car up, and it was beautiful; it felt like we were birds swooping over the treetops.
We stopped at the observation deck to take a few photos (I suppose, in hindsight, this is what the description mig
ht have been referring to), and then we headed for the top. We started climbing stairs, and one of the two girls who was with me began to count. “Um…” I said, looking up, “I don’t think this is the 120 steps he was talking about. We have to cross a bridge first.”
Indeed, in order to get to the bridge, we had to climb quite a few steps. But the bridge was lovely, and at this point, it felt like a nice walk.
After we passed the bridge, we climbed hundreds more steps, and I started to regret my life choices. Then we reached the point where there were no longer manmade steps, just rocks to climb and scramble over as best you could—on all fours, pulling yourself over on the railing, however you could make it work. I had to stop several times on the way to the top, but after about an hour and a half, I made it to the summit (receipts at left). I was very proud.
Me, feeling proud.
And the views were lovely:
But then I learned that sometimes going down a mountain is even worse than going up. There were supposed to be a few different trails to the cable car, one of which was allegedly easier, more winding and gradual. In fact, there were no easy ways to get on and off this mountain. After a brief respite on a leaf-strewn path in the woods, we headed down in earnest, and the trail looked like this:
Except sometimes there wasn’t a railing at all. At one point, I was hugging a rock as I walked sideways so as not to fall off the mountain.
I wasn’t loving the hike at this point, but I was doing okay. Then one of the girls and I realized that we had somehow missed the trail that went to the cable car, we’d been left by our faster friend, we had no choice but to climb another 800m to the bottom, we had only a vague idea of what the right trail to get there was, and we had an hour to make it back before the bus left.
This was the point when I stopped having any fun at all and seriously considered the ramifications of sitting down on the trail and crying. Then I forced myself to keep going anyway. My legs were shaking, and it took all my mental energy to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I was tired, so my balance was shit, and I have the bruises to show for it today.
Eventually, two hours after we left the top, we made it to the bottom of the mountain. To the side of the highway, to be precise, where we had to backtrack for 15-20 minutes to return to the bus. (I’ve never thought so seriously about hitchhiking, but we can’t even get cabs to pick us up here, so I didn’t have high hopes for strangers.) We made it back 15 minutes before the bus left—no leisurely lunch for the weary. Standing at the bottom, I looked back up at the mountain in wonder.
I suppose I feel some small sense of accomplishment for surviving. Mostly, though, I’m just glad it’s over. But to be fair, the leaves were very pretty:
