Pukansan National Park

Rather than waste my day off in bed as usual, I decided took up Christa's offer of a morning hike up our mountain, mt. Pukansan (I think). She'd not been before, so I was the guide, poor girl, as I've already been part-way up a couple of times before. Our first obstacle: a bloody great iron fence right where we usually join the trail. I'm not sure if this is to keep the kids inside the village or us out of the park. Officially you're supposed to go up the road and pay to get in the park but nobody ever does, even though it's only about 70p! Anyway, we figured if they really didn't want us crossing over, they'd've strung barbed wire up too. Since they didn't, we climbed over and continued on our merry way. Visibility wasn't too bad for once. Usually this view looking South over Soeul is obscured by haze and smog, but we picked a good day. The clouds were a little foreboding though, as a typhoon warning had been issued the previous day. We ignored it and luckily the rain held. It gets very slippery up there went it rains even when it only rains a little, and the promised rains were supposed to be heavy, which would've been really dangerous up there. After just two days here one guy broke his leg on the mountain and had to be rescued by helicopter. This is Christa celebrating us reaching a summit. Not the summit as there are many and each would take the best part of a day to reach, but still a decent accomplishment. This is the furthest I've reached yet, as usually there's someone in the group who wants to turn round as soon as the going gets tough, so I was pleased. Even getting this high and back only took two-and-a-bit hours in all. This is me staking out our goal for next time. We're thinking we might have to pay though as out here we're stuck following the one trail that we know. The commercial end of the park is said to be bustling with people though, so I'm thinking maybe not quite the same experience. Even stood up on our own little peak we could see a few other groups on the other side of the valley. I guess we'll explore all of it in time though. In autumn (I had to fight the urge to write 'in the fall' just there) it should be lovely. We're thinking a peak with clouds might be nice sometime. Christa went hiking in the Rockies once when it was like this. It sounds cool. Amazing photo ops too, natch. And this is the sight you get to behold at the very top if you turn your back on the city. The panograph business, while not a great attempt (I hadn't intended to do this at the time, but it turned out that a lot of our pictures overlapped anyway), is the only way to get any sense of scale. The hillock on the left is the mini-peak we finally scaled, the pile of rocks on the right is the setting of the photos of me and Christa shown above.