Hiking Achasan

Here we go with trying to catch up on the Korea posts on our blog!

Seoul is the greenest big city I've ever been in (I would guess it's probably one of the more greener metropolises in the world, but that's just a guess based on the few large cities I've experienced). In amongst the apartment buildings and sprawling city lie more mountains than you can count. On May 26, one of our Saturday's off, Jonathan and I headed over to another part of the city to hike Achasan (Mt. Acha). We started with a fairly easy climb to a pavilion at the peak. We were surprised at how fast we reached the top and spent a few minutes resting there, looking at the city below, and watching Koreans hiking up the trail, some carrying bikes above their heads. Then we realized that the trail actually went up past the pavilion and connected with another trail going up the side of the actual mountain. I guess the first part was just a small hill. So we continued on and hiked for several more hours up to the real top of Achasan. From there we could have continued on to a sister mountain, but we decided we'd have to leave that one for another time and descended the same trail we'd hiked up. It was a nice hike, but the view of the city was rather hazy that day, which was sad because otherwise we might have been able to see quite a long ways away.

Posing at what we thought was the top

Intricate ceiling paintings

A small library in the pavilion where weary hikers could rest

Some of Seoul

Stairs to the top of an old fortress wall

Us in front of hazy Seoul

Camouflaged light pole