Mt. Halla-san, I hate you!
Trip Start
Sep 23, 2009
1
6
11
Trip End
Oct 05, 2009
Jeju City, Jeju Island, Korea Rep.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
So, Heather and I headed to Mt. Halla-san Sunday morning, getting there around 10 because I couldn't find anything edible for breakfast and ended up having rice porridge from a convenient store called G25. (I am convinced they think there are 25 hours in the day and just misnamed this store.) So the hike starts out fine, walking through the forest underneath a canopy of trees and only on a slight incline. However, this is just to lull the unsuspecting hiker into a false sense of security because by the 3 km marker you are giving your legs quite a workout going from one lava rock staircase to another. It gets really tough about 6 km in (I am out of shape right now) and becomes a sheer climb for most of it until you get to the UNESCO rest station about 7.3km in. At this point you welcome a chance to sit, rest and eat, and figure you only have 2.3 km to go...how bad could it be? Well, I'm not gonna lie, it sucked. I say this not to dissuade anyone from making the climb, by just to make the point that it wasn't. Now, I consider myself some kind of athlete, and there are those of you out there that will laugh at this statement and your chuckling is not without some merit, but when there is an 80 year old "ajaman" (grandmom) passing you on the stairs, it is pretty emasculating. Let's just say I left part of my manhood on Mt. Halla-san. Anyway, after the break we made our way to the top...the last 1 km being through bitterly cold wind and mist (it was prolly about 45 degrees F up there; you are about 2000 meters up I think), and when we got to the top after enduring the staircase from hell, we were rewarded with....NOTHING!! Not a damn thing! You couldn't see shit! And we even checked the weather reports to make sure we would have a good climb. I swear there is absolutely no accountability in the professions of meterology or minor league baseball umpiring. For those of you that want to see what we saw, please click on the little mini video that Heather made. And, no I wouldn't really have traded Heather for a cup of hot chocolate. If someone had a whole thermus full....well, maybe.
We didn't stay at the top very long because it was freezing and started to make our ways back down. Unfortunately, I had to listen to whining the whole way back down about how tired someone's legs were, but for some reason I just couldn't get myself to shut up. haha My legs were absolutely cooked, and trying to use my non-existant calves to bounce from one lava rock to another was an endurance trial. You know you are tired when you have to make a conscious effort to tell your legs to move each step. So, heather and I get back down to the UNESCO station and I got some hot noodles, while she ate kimchi, which is rice and some vegetables wrapped in seaweed that tastes to me like a dead seamonkey. The noodles were probably the greatest thing I had ever tasted at that moment and we lingered at the UNESCO station long enough to let it start raining. (Note: I was emasculated again at the UNESCO station by the two couples we talked to, who were in their late 60's and who were doing a 20 day, 205km trek around Korea. Yup, I'm an athlete.)
So we threw our ponchos back on and headed back down the mountain. One thing I must say I am thankful for is that the lava rocks are not slippery when wet, because if they were, we would still be on that damn mountain. As we descended I kept making jokes about how it couldn't possibly rain any harder, and sure enough every time I said that, within seconds it was actually raining harder, which in itself was amazing because its not like it wasn't a torrential downpour each time I made the statement. Anyway, this took Heather and my mind off what we were doing and made a few of the kms fly by. This was actually prolly the most enjoyable part of the hike, and Heather and I were just joking and laughing the whole time. After it stopped raining, my mind returned to how sore and tired I was and the last few km were pretty brutal. Heather, however, and I must give her credit, is in incredible shape and just forged ahead unfazed. When we got back down we took the bus into Jeju City to Hotel Hawaii where we stayed the night. Hotel Hawaii was pretty nice, but there didn't seem to be anyone there that really spoke English and it was kind of off the main drag. It was also kind of pricey, but at this point I just wanted somewhere warm to shower and pass out. Heather and I treated ourselves to some pizza and soda for completing our 19.2 km hike (about 11.5 miles) and passed out. All-in-all a good day even though we didn't get to see anything at the top and despite the fact we had to listen to Justin complain about how tired and sore he was.
