Hanguk Sans

One of the best things that I've spent a lot of my weekends here doing is climbing the many mountains around the city and elsewhere. Hiking is always something that was generally reserved for the summers back home, but now that I have the free time and am able to get around on Maggie easily, I've been trying to hike at least once every couple of weekends. Mostly it has been local mountains like Jangseongsan or Mudeungsan, but over our thanksgiving break Mike and I were able to head up to Seoraksan, up by the DMZ in the Northeast part of the country. Although almost every trail was closed due to the snow, we played the part of confused hwaeguk saram (foreigners) and hopped the fences or banners. While we did get a 5 minute lecture by a korean park ranger, it was easily worth the nodding and insincere apologies.




After the extended berating, we followed a trail which led up to this little cave in the side of a rock face, which happened to be a really small buddhist temple. As we were quite tired from hiking 6+ hours without any breaks, it was nice to just sit there and hear the chanting of the monk. He was banging his sticks together really loudly. Had it been a little kid, I probably would have been annoyed, but somehow his get-up and the location gave it a nice, relaxing effect.


This is a view out of the cave.

The buddhism ran thick at Seoraksan. So much so that they built one the size of a small building at the base of the trails. It had a nice presence.





Although this post has been centered mostly around Seoraksan, I've really only been there once. Most of my time hiking has been around these parts:


Above: Looking up at Mudeungsan
Below: Looking down from Jangseongsan