A Very Wet Hike

The last time I went to Juwang-San, I came back and told my co-teachers, who told me I should return in the fall because of the beautiful colors. This being the first free weekend to make our way back, Scott and I hopped a bus with our friends Alice and Dave to do some hiking. This time we wanted to try and climb to one of the peaks, since last time we got a peak at the waterfalls.

(Dave is a Hagwan, after school academy, teacher that also works in Andong)

After a week of beautiful dry and rather warm weather, the rain started to fall as our bus was about 5 minutes outside of the park. We were not deterred. This being the third time mountain climbing in the rain since I've been here, I've gotten accustomed to wearing a poncho.

It was in a way good timing though, because Sunday was the last day for the apple festival running down around Cheongsong, so we were able to snag a couple single-packaged apples and a free cup of chrysanthemum tea (the best tea in the world, I'm convinced) right before they started taking everything down.

Since I've already written about Juwang-San once, I'm going to make this mostly a picture post about our journey to the top of Juwang-San peak. It is a good hike, because it has whole sections of flat pathway to break up the moments of intense upward climbing over rocks and roots, and the occasional built in stairway. And although the rain was working at beating the last of the autumn leaves off the trees, it was still vibrant and beautiful.

This is as far as we got, about .3km from the peak. It started raining incredibly hard by this point, and the rocks were slippery. To make our way through this particular spot, we had to creep around the big rock and hold on to the railing (about a 1 foot wide space where the person with the umbrella just came from). On the other side of the rail was an immediate drop down. Not that we aren't adventurous, but it was starting to thunder and we still had 2km to backtrack. Dave had wisened up about 20 minutes earlier and turned back, not that he looked any less saturated when we regrouped at the bottom.

We were slowly becoming one with the fallen leaves and the river of water at our feet. We were very wet.

The storm made the whole place look very eerie as the darkness started to close in under the clouds, and a creeping fog floated around us.

I'd like to say we should start checking the weather forecast before we leave to go places, but then we'd miss out on such splendid discomfort- and forget how good hot showers feel.