Death march hike on Dobongsan

Our friend Asaf came into town for Chusok. We wanted to show him a good time, and we haven't had time to see a lot of stuff in Seoul yet, so we decided this would be a great opportunity to get in some hiking on the beautiful granite mountains that we see everyday from our bedroom window. We read about the Dobongsan hike in both the Korea guidebooks we have, so we figured it was a pretty good choice. Moderate, 5-6 hours, beautiful views, easy access from the subway. Great. We made a plan of it.

This morning we got up a little later that originally intended, but I figured a day of hiking deserved a good rest. We got out of the house by 11:15, and took the subway just a few short stops to the northwest. We got off the train and followed all of the way-over-dressed (or so we thought) hikers through the hundreds of hiking apparel and food stalls toward the trail head. Hiking is Korea is not the same quiet, one-with-nature, lonesome experience it is back home. Hiking in Korea is like waiting in line all the way up a mountain, but not really in a bad way. It's just more of a communal event.

Heading up, we came across a beautiful temple and wandered around for a few minutes. At that point we were thinking this might be a pretty relaxing experience. We continued up the mountain, came across another temple, and very gradually the hike starting going from pleasant to intense. Pretty soon it was hand over foot on granite boulders. We kept following the crowds (including children and the very active elderly) up, up, up. It was really amazing how much up there was. When looking at the mountains from afar (say, from our house) you can see the jagged granite cliffs sticking out white and stark against the sky, and I knew we were going to go hike those mountains. I just didn't imagine that we would actually be scaling the granite cliffs. In the US, you would need a permit for this kind of thing, you would have to sign a waiver. All of a sudden we were faced with rocks too hard to climb with just hands and feet. At this point, we found ourselves hoisting our bodies upward by clinging to poles and wire cables set into the rock. We were still following the children and the elderly folks. Reaching the peak was totally surreal. We were just barely perched there with something like thirty other people, clinging to these little fences and looking around at the city of Seoul spread out several hundred meters below us. Any of us easily could have fallen to our deaths at any moment and we found ourselves thinking that someone must have died getting these posts up here. I felt dizzy and sick to my stomach. I sat in the safest place I could find and waited for my heart to slow down and my adrenaline to stop pumping. Richy and Asaf didn't seem to have quite the same reaction to the height, but they agreed that it was pretty crazy. And this was nothing compared to the way down.

According to the guidebook, we were supposed to hike the mountains in kind of a loop: get off at one subway station, hike up the mountains, across the ridge, loop around, and come down to the other subway station. It seemed simple, and after the peak we thought, "Well, it's all downhill from here!" We saw the first downward looking trail and began to take it, but it seemed like we were going in the wrong direction. We asked some Korean hikers the direction of the station we were heading to, they laughed at us and pointed up. Then they pointed at our Chacos
and said "ha, ha, slippers!" So we went back up, and started toward what looked like another peak. All the guidebook said about the way back was something about a ravine and clinging to wire cables. Actually, it was an entire granite ridge, where we were precariously perched over sheer drops, clinging to cables and contending with waves of Korean hikers moving in both directions. At one point we came down an impossibly steep cliff only by clinging with our lives to a cable, only to reach a small standing spot, and having to scale another impossibly steep cliff in the other direction. At that point, we would have turned around if we could, but the only options were both straight up and the only easy way out would have involved calling a helicopter. I was really feeling nauseated by the whole thing, but we couldn't stop laughing about how completely insane this was.

Needless to say, our hike turned into more of an upper body workout than we ever could have imagined, and while I never would have chosen the hike knowing the difficulty level, I am glad we did it. On the subway ride back we had a new appreciation for the not-so-overdressed Korean hikers we see everyday on subway and a new appreciation of the muscle relaxing power of Korean fermented rice beverages. And the pizza we had for dinner never tasted so good.



Katie.