Winter Hiking at Dobongsan

Mike, me, and two guys from GM North American, Scott and Mark all decided that Saturday morning in 27 degree weather was a good time to go back to Dobongsan and hike up the mountain.

Mike and I had hiked Dobongsan before in the summer, but it seems that we never take the same trail. With the mixture of Korean and English, I think an English map that is wrong and lots of un-marked forks in the trail, we managed to end up on what I will refer to as the "expert trail" or the "this is F---ing crazy" trail.

Here in Korea, switch-backs don't exist in the vocabulary, so everything is straight up! This was just the beginning of the elevation.

And here come the beginning of the treacherous parts....hang onto that tree Mike because one wrong step and you are tumbling down that mountain...oh, and watch for the patches of ICE!

Yes, those are chains and we had to almost hoist ourselves up along the side of the mountain...Scott was making his way up.

This is where I stopped. Probably only 20 minutes from the peak, after 3 1/2 hours of hiking, but this section looked scary.  Here are Mike and Scott hanging onto cables, scaling the cliffs...

GM folks reach the top...

Jen waits just below... not so bad of views from where I was.

Mark even found some time to meditate while on the mountain.

If you are visting Seoul, you can reach Dobongsan easily using the subway (line #1 or line #7). Mike has a great map to get you there. It is an hour ride from downtown Seoul and really is a beautiful place.  Leave plenty of time though, as our trek started about 9AM and ended about 3PM...slightly longer than expected. We did get some great news at the end...oh, we found the steps!! There are steps you can take instead of scaling rocks...trick...you need to find the steps.

I am looking forward to the gradual switchbacks of the States...