How Not to Climb Mt. Daedunsan

After my How Not Climb Mt. Fuji post, I probably should write a blog titled, "Cliff Should Stop Trying to Climb Mountains".

I am currently in the middle of my week-long trip to South Korea. Korea is my first new country to visit in my three years on JET. I chose Korea because 1) the airplane ticket was cheap and 2) I have lots of friends teaching English there.

My itinerary was as follows:

1. Visit a friend and hang out.
2. Visit another friend and hang out.
3. Climb a mountain.
4. Go back and visit the first friend.

Basically, I had no idea what I was doing. Since I knew nothing about Korea, I was hoping that the people I would be visiting would show me around. So far, that is exactly what has happened and it has been a blast.

The 'Climb a Mountain' plan was something I wanted to do solo. For that, I needed to do a little bit of preperation, like deciding what mountain to climb. Korea is full of mountains and hiking trails, so it was hard for me to narrow down the list

I finally decided on Seoraksan, but that turned out to be farther away than expected. So I looked at some mountains that were close to where I was staying (a novel idea!) and decided on Daedunsan.

These names probably have as much meaning to you as they did to me when I was working this out, but I decided on Daedunsan because the mountain had a sweet cable car and a killer suspension bridge (My high school English teacher would be proud of this sentence).

Getting to the top was no problem. The cable car was as sweet as expected and the suspension bridge was even more killer than I thought it would be. I ate my lunch at the top and took pictures until my camera died.

Then...I began my decent. The thing with Daedunsan is that it is one mountain among many (unlike Mt. Fuji), so there are lots and lots of trails. I repeatedly came across signs that said, 'go this way to see a temple (3km)', 'head that way to an observatory (1.5km)', etc. You could hike forever. I took a couple of these detours and saw a Buddha carved into a rock that was apparently really old. Then I followed another sign to an awesome observatory that had a view that was even better than the tallest peak I had eaten my lunch on. That view made the trip for me. Finally, I worked my way back to the spot where I had originally diverted.

This is where it started to suck

To explain my body condition at this point, I need to backtrack. I had spent two nights at my friend Ben's apartment and had rested up so well that it made it difficult to go to sleep last night even though I knew I had to get up early. I got enough hours in to feel I was able to hike, but after the 4 hours in travel time and then the roughly 3km I had done up to this point, my body was tired. Real tired.

Taking the advice of some old Korean man, I took a different route instead of retracing my steps back to the cable car. He told me (with gestures), that the two routes intersect each other. Sweet.

But the way down was hard. It was a 500m (at least) scramble down rocks. It looked like the Agro Crag on crack. All I could do was put one foot down after the other and try not to slip. It was during this decent I realized, 'Man, this is dangerous.'

What was going through my mind was that no one would find my body. Korean hiking trails are usually packed, but apparently not on Tuesday. There was nobody around and had I made one slip, it would have been hours before some lone old man would have found me.

To make matters worse, there were a couple of instances where I was climbing down what I thought was the trail, only to reach a dead end and realized I had gone off it. So I had to backtrack. This happened a number of times and made me even more tired.

I finally reached a point where I had no idea where I was.

I could have sworn I had followed the signs correctly, but obviously I hadn't because I was wandering around in a circle. I started to get nervous.

After about 10 minutes, I saw an old man about 50 meters away. I cut across the wood and discovered the path I had lost. He was standing next to a sign that pointed to the cable car, but the distance was now FARTHER than it was previously, meaning I really had messed up. My other option was the ticket office, which was the same distance. I chose that because that involved climbing down, whereas the cable car involved climbing up.

And from there it was easy. It was another 800m, but there was no more Crag to climb down. I cleared the wood...and found myself standing on the interstate. I saw some old man selling vegetables across the street, so I went over to him and asked where my hotel is. He points in the direction and I started walking. It turned out to be another kilometer. I was dirty, sweaty, and as cars passed, people would stare at me. I felt like a bum.

But I finally made it back to the hotel and I discovered that it had a hot spring. I was in heaven.

(stolen from the internets since my camera died)

The yellow line is the cable car. Took 5 minutes.
The blue line is the climb to the top. Took 40 min, maybe.
The red line is how NOT to climb (I guess it's really a decent) Mt. Daedunsan.

Well, you can if you are hardcore like me. It took a minimum of 2 hours.