Gaji San!

I had one of the craziest Sundays ever a week ago.  I hiked the peak of the highest mountain in Ulsan, and the third highest in Korea with my friends from Hogye (same group that I did Pereaso Falls with, and nearly the same location!).  There is a little background information necessary, but in a nut shell: we got caught on the mountain in the dark, and got lost on the way down!  It was actually really scary, but I'll have to give the whole story to put it into perspective.

On Saturday my friends told me about this hike, that would take about 5-6 hours, but that it would be amazing and worth it.  I would have to leave my apartment at 7:30 am to meet them, then head out to where the mountain is.  I had already committed to attending an event that my friend was DJing.  He is one of my pretty good friends here, and it was supposed to be a huge event, so I didn't want to cancel.  What I decided is that I would go, but not stay too late, and then go on the hike the next day.  I got there and it was "Funk" themed, so the dancing was endless.  I was dancing for about 4 hours and didn't leave until 2am.  I was determined though, so I got up at 7am on 4 hours of sleep, and made it to meet my friends on time.

We all caught the bus and made it over to where Gaji San is ("san" is "mountain" in Korean).  We actually began our hike at 10:30 am, and it was beautiful.  There were some intense portions, and some fairly relaxing and scenic parts.  Where we started running into trouble though because some of us could hike fast enough to complete it in 5-6 hours, but a couple (out of 7 of us) could not keep that pace.  It was not a problem waiting at certain points, or in my case hiking a little slower to join them.

The hike was beautiful though, and we crossed paths with many friendly Korean hikers along the way.  We stopped at one mountain peak to eat with 3 Korean fellows, and then made it to the peak shortly after!

 Here is our little picnic with the 3 Korean gentlemen. 

As we were in the final stretch to the peak we passed this group.  The one guy was climbing that tree to pick fruit, which was right over the face of the mountain.. haha no thanks.

Picture taken as I reached the peak!

Julia and Connie.  Unfortunately after this long and crazy hike Julia (one of the fast hikers) caught pneumonia :(  She was already a little sick I guess, and then went on this hike.  I visited her this past Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  It looks like she is doing well, but still in the hospital. 

 

 Serious picture..

(Connie, Julia, Howard, Erin, Myself, Kathrine, and Norah)

CRAZY picture!

This is a bit of a silly video, and at the beginning they were joking how they were recording each other recording each other, so I recorded THAT.  haha then I walked over and said Tru HD(ehh), which is from a Korean Smart phone commercial.  (Koreans add the 'ehh' to many English words by the way.  Example: "The puppy is cute-ehhhh," or in volleyball: "nice-ehhh!")  Also "kimchi" is what people say instead of "cheese" for a picture haha.

Now we had a couple hours to get down, but it had taken us about 6 hours to get to the peak.. which was not good.  Also if we were to complete the 'loop' of the hike route, it would have been shorter on the way down, but the others worried about taking the wrong way down.  So when I was not worried about getting caught in the dark, it quickly became apparent that if we didn't hurry we would be in a little trouble.

As we were making our way down, the faster hikers were getting more and more worried about the time, and decided they were going to just go ahead.  I was with them (a bit ahead of the slower hikers) at a path intersection, and knew the right thing to do was to stay back with the others.  I did just that and did my best to lead them in the right direction as quickly as possible.  As dusk set in and we saw that we were not yet very close to ground level, a bit of panic started setting in.  Our faster friends had just reached the bottom, and we knew we had a ways to go.

Well we were on track and making it in the darkening night for a good while, but finally took a wrong turn.  At this point our friends at the bottom had found flashlights at the temple (at the base of the mountain) and borrowed them from the monks.  As they were coming to meet us we found a farm house with a light on and a barking dog.  We were not sure if we should go back into the pitch black woods of the mountain, or attempt to ask for help at this house.  Since our friends were determined to come find us we ventured back into the wilderness, and eventually found the trail (thank you glow in the dark post!).  Our friends actually overshot us by about 15 minutes, and we found that out be all yelling as loud as we could, followed by them (also thank you cell phones!!).

This is what hiking in the dark looks like..

When we knew where we were and that help was on the way, my three hiking companions and I took a seat on the trail and told stories until we were 'rescued.'  It was just rediculous.  We hiked for 9 hours; I had been dancing like crazy the night before and gotten 4 hours of sleep.  We all made it back (I slept on the bus) and had dinner in Hogye.

I was so wiped out, even with 8 hours of sleep, that I had almost no energy on Monday.  I canceled my doctor appointment and Taekwondo.  All in all it was still a fun experience, and definitely one I will never forget.  Also I still love all of the people in that group, but some of them are more suited for 'advanced' hikes.  You live and you learn!