trekkin'

in the spirit of becoming a "hiking kind of person" (see previous post 'up, up, and down') i went for a hike today. i suppose i could have gone for longer, but two hours seemed like a decent length of time for my second hike of the year... and my first real one since october. before that it had been years... sorry, just a little pat on the back for myself there...

my hike began as all korean hiking experiences start (well, many anyway) on a road.
you have to take a road up part of the way up the mountain in order to get to the good part - the actual mountain. even though i technically live in the foothills of the mountain i was climbing, everything is just so built up... as you'll see.
part way up you can veer off onto a path that follows the road, but much of it has been paved with cement. i wonder if this is to make it easier to get up in the wet season... anyway, it just doesn't feel like nature... gotta keep climbing for that... right?

i came to this bridge, and though there wasn't really more than a trickle of water passing udner it, i can only imagine the torrent that the trickle becomes when it rains for six weeks straight. i'll have to go back and check.

on the other side of the bridge is this little rest station - benches, signs to tell you where to go and how far it is (in korean, no good for me) and see the yellow padding on the trees? not sure, but i think that's for comfort if you don't want to sit, but just want to lean on a tree... where's the nature?

this is where the title of this post temporarily changes to "the stairs of korean mountains"...

stairway one

stairway two

stairway three

stairway four

(end post stairs of korean mountains)

i should have thought about it while i was still up the mountain... these are just a small sample of the way that the koreans make it easier to get to the top... i didn't shoot them all, nor would i have time to post them all here if i had... you get the point. sometimes it's nice to have a little help, but again, where's the pure nature?

oh! there it is! at the top! but still, it isn't even... if you look closely you'll see a building over there... it's a buddhist temple, and i thought i was going to it, but ended up on the wrong side of a wide valley - now i know where to go next time! it was still very beautiful up there, and quiet, and i was surrounded by nature. i sat on a big boulder at the top for bit. i was surrounded by trees and i thought to myself how much it actually looked and felt like canada. i used to climb mont saint hilaire, on the south shore of montreal, all the time when i was a teenager, and it just felt the same... like i was almost actually home. i think i need to climb mountains more now... i like this new hiking type of person that i'm turning into.

it wasn't easy, and i didn't get anywhere close to where i was aiming for, but it was lovely to be surrounded by trees, away from the boredom of my apartment, and also the bustle of the city. to think it only took me a little over an hour walking to get away from it all like that... wish i had discovered this months ago!

this is a view of the mountain i climbed from the parking lot of the dongbu sports complex - i stopped off on my way back to get info on their swimming pool. not bad... it's not the rockies, but it's definitely bigger than mount royal in montreal... next time i'll have to get some friends to come with, maybe we can have a picnic on one of the many rest stations up there:

like this one! hopefully i'll make it to the temple too... and eventually i'll make it all the way to the top of mount sineosan:

i think it's the tallest mountain in gimhae... see you there!