Peaking Weekend

By the time Sunday rolled around, I was ready to roll out. In keeping with this "rolling" theme, I rolled out of bed, rolled up my thick socks and had a roll for breakfast (it would have been better if I'd been listening to Kieth Richards and Mick Jagger, but I'll desist). I then walked down the hall to rouse a couple of my more outdoorsey type buddies and we took off for a day of hiking. Destination: Dobongsan.

First, take everything you know about hiking and chuck it off a cliff. (I understand that for some of you, just imagining that cliff from which you are chucking all your knowledge of hiking indeed constitutes all your knowledge of hiking...but stick with me here) To begin, in Seoul you don't drive out in your beat up volvo or jeep, into the woods to find some trailhead next to the road. No, you first walk to the subway station. On the way we grabbed a hardy sustaining snack like any good hiker does pre-trail, but it wasn't the normal "GORP" (Good Ol' raisins and Peanuts to all you non-hikers, homo stationarious) Instead we had my favorite stall food, "Love Fish". They're these fried dough pastries shaped like fish and filled with hot sweet red bean. There's nothing better to warm you with ooey-gooey caloric goodness. And there is absolutely nothing "granola-esque" about them. In fact there is nothing granola-esque about Seoul in general...except maybe the granola they import from the States and sell at E-mart for $20. But what hippie could afford that?!

Hiking in Seoul is not just for hippies- no, no. It's the Northface clad executive businessman and weekend urban adventurers that hit the mountains here. One of the oddest, most incongruous experiences I've had yet was taking the underground to get to the mountain. It just didn't seem right. Me decked out in my hiking gear and daypack- trying to maintain that outdoorsey roughness while sitting on a subway car sandwiched between an old lady with a fruit basket and a 7 year old girl with a HelloKitty backpack and matching pink hat.

But by the time we'd reached our stop the car was mostly filled with Colombia coats and Northface hats and Lowe Alpine packs. Man, Koreans love their EMS (homo stationarious translation: "Expensive Mountain Shit" ...mother homo-stationarious translation: "Expensive Mountain Stuff") It seemed more like a fashion scene than natural scenery, more of a catwalk than a walk in the woods. At the base of the trail we weaved and bobbed through steamy ramen huts and mountain gear outlets, dogded through the crowds of florescent jackets, and made our way to the ticket booth.

The trekking itself was pretty enjoyable, the trail was nice, the trees still had a hint of fall foliage, the air was chilled and felt really refreshing once the heart got pumping adding a nice flush to the cheeks. But at some points, weaving through the throngs of other hikers felt like standing in a line at Disney World. And it was very difficult to achieve a sense of youthful vigor and accomplishment when you're constantly making way for elderly couples as they hobble up the path, or mothers toting their toddlers along. Yep, hobblers and toddlers and me, all making our way up Dobongsan on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

After a while we just got used to the constant traffic and enjoyed the stream of smiles and greetings from our fellow mountaineers. Toward the top the trail became much more challenging and we actually attempted some bouldering and wall climbing (with the assistance of some aptly placed cables and Korean men with chalk bags hanging from their belts). At one point I was literally wedged between a rock and a hard place (that "hard place" being another rock) I took a moment to reflect on the proverbial nature of my position...but then began to lose feeling in my lower body and decided to move on. The peaks were an impressive series of jagged faces and boulders, jutting out above the treeline. By the end of the day my hands were well-soiled and my knees were sufficiently scraped and scuffed to deem the adventure a success.

Near the bottom we passed a Buddhist hermitage where, curiously enough, a woman offered us some the fruit left at the base of the statue. But we felt it may be inappropriate to take it an we didn't feel like incurring the disdain of any deity that afternoon, so we politely declined and sought out other sustanence. We found it in a cart of apples sold by a man in the subway station and split a kilo. Once we finally flopped down on the subway car we all felt that lovely heaviness of exhaustion and waited for our numb little digits to regain color and feeling. I chose to ignore the fact that I was once again seated next to a little girl in a Hello Kitty outfit, and that she had also just completed a day fo hiking on Dobongsan. But I bet she didn't get wedged between boulders or offered Buddha's fruit.

I'm still more hard core.