This is the view right at the entrance to the park. I think this will help people to understand why I love this place -- it is beautiful. I have visited Seoraksan on 3 different occasions and I have done all of the hikes at the main entrance to the park.
Ulsanbawi, a large rock (cliff) in Seoraksan and one of the most popular hikes -- because the Koreans have built a staircase up the side of the rock. It is 808 stairs high and starts about 4 km into the forests -- quite the workout.
This is me at the top of Ulsanbawi in February 2005. Glad I did that hike in winter!
Here is the sunrise at the top of the mountain. It was beautiful and worth the climb. It took me 6 hours to hike up the mountain and 7.5 to hike down the next day.
We slept at the top of the mountain the night before that sunrise -- but seeing as this is a picture of the room we slept in not many of us actually got any sleep. The room comfortably would have slept 10-14 people -- we had 26 in it and Seokjin kept telling us that it hold 40! All of our feet were overlapping in the middle and we could not all lay down on our backs -- or we would be on top of each other -- but at least it was warm and dry (maybe a little too warm).
This park is full of beautiful scenery and waterfalls like this one.
The one problem with Seoraksan is that it os the most popular park in Korea so tons of people are there every weekend -- that means that the most popular trails are packed with people. Going up the mountain for the traverse we had no problems -- but this is what parts of the way down looked like. How much do I love lineups to go up and down mountains.
Here is the huge Buddha near the entrance.
Being the most popular park many people come to Seoraksan to paint its beautiful scenery. He is painting with ink -- outside -- that is very impressive.
No comments:
Post a Comment