And This Isn't Even the Tallest Peak in Korea...

Wolchulsan

So recently here in Korea, we had a long weekend due to a bank holiday and local elections. Usually, the locals and expats alike choose to do a bit of traveling during these long weekends, heading to Jeju-do or Busan, pampering themselves while drinking soju or makkoli on a beach. Rarely—very rarely—do they try to commit suicide by mountain, but we chose to be the adventurous pair for our weekend. :)

We were invited to Wolchulsan by some good friends here in Jangheung: Katie, Pete, and Jeanette; though Pete wasn’t able to make it due to some troubles he was having with a recently-purchased car. The void he left in our hearts was filled by three others: John and Mara, peeps from our orientation and long-time teachers who live in Yeosu; and Erin, a friendly stranger who remains both friendly and strange as she arrived just as we were starting the trail to the top of Wolchulsan—which happened to be around the point Kristen and I gave up hiking.

The view from the very beginning of the trail:

To say that American hiking is different from Korean hiking is to say that drinking water is kinda different from waterboarding. One is fun and refreshing: you can splash your friends or quench your thirst or shake your face back and forth in front of a water bottle like a supermodel. The other is waterboarding.

When Koreans hike, they dress from head to toe in remarkably-flamboyant hiking costumes that look uncomfortable and silly—that is, until they pass you up laughing and dancing like it’s their Mardi Gras, skipping back and forth from rock to rock. Meanwhile, you’re standing there, defunct and dressed incorrectly in a tank top and shorts, sweating like a cephalopod in Japanese waters.

Along with these differences in apparel, hiking in Korea is steep work! Wolchulsan was essentially five-ish hours of straight lunges. The path that guides you is anywhere from up to straight-up to straight-up-the-side-of-a-mountain. Once your face touches the stairs you’re climbing, you know it’s on. The views are beautiful, of course! But the trip is exhausting. Every hundred meters is a gauntlet, testing the supplicant’s resolve to see what’s over that next hill or—more likely—that next hellish rise of stairs.

A baby staircase on Wolchulsan:

A strong, angry, adult staircase on Wolchulsan:

I’d like to say that Kristen and I were in better spirits as we went up, but it wasn’t half an hour into the trail before we talked about giving up and heading back down. Since our friends had already passed us up and were not stopping as often, we just figured it was the courageous thing to do. “Right? It’s okay to save our bodies and lives and quit while we’re ahead?” we thought simultaneously. Coupled with the arduous journey and Kristen’s minor stint as a celebrity as the most beautiful woman in the world, we got worn out fast. We couldn’t hike more than twenty or thirty meters without collapsing to rest or for Kristen to be doted on by passersby. Here in Korea—and let’s face it, everywhere—people love how small Kristen’s face is! Especially when compared to the size of her eyes, which seem large and bright when nestled in, say, an enormous floppy hat. Yes, we have pictures...

We tried for a while to keep up with the rest of the group, but, not having hiked anywhere in recent memory, we quickly found ourselves scaling higher and higher. As we were slowly on our way up through the brush and forests on the mountainside, you can imagine, then, how elated we were when we reached a pagoda and found that we had caught up to everyone. We’d found the fabled skybridge (the only thing we really knew about Wolchulsan save that the “san” part means “mountain”) and celebrated, thinking, “This is it, right? We can walk back down and take naps now?”

Unfortunately, the skybridge was just the hilt of quite a lengthy sword and, after crossing the bridge, we found ourselves looking at steeper stairs and vertigo-inducing cliffs just below them. Every fifteen minutes went something like this:

Hike for a bit.

Stop.

Huff and puff.

Guzzle water.

Talk about stopping.

Resolve to give up, retreat, take showers, eat BBQ, rest etc.

But then eventually, keep going.

Somehow, we kept on. Kept taking pictures, smiling like mental patients at the anguish we were experiencing. “For the blog!” we chanted, “Must continue for the blog! *huff huff* Must prove we are loving our new lives in Korea! *huff huff* Must. Instagram. Must *collapse*.”

Then! We made it to the top! And there was when we passed our friends as they were already starting their descent back down to catch a bus we were, frankly, not even close to catching. “We hadn’t been so far behind,” we thought. “Even with our aching legs, back, everything.” But the point was, we had made it. We had made it all the way up to the main peak of Wolchulsan and now we could enjoy the gentle walk down. We took happy pictures—blissful pictures—munched on snacks, and enjoyed the view. Euphoric with exhaustion and whatever brain-ailment had caused us to hike up there in the first place, we felt we had succeeded.

The view from atop Wolchulsan were incredibly worth it, we admit.

So was the snack time once we made it to the top. We weren't the only one to chow down up there either:

After a bit more happiness-basking, we started our leisurely trip back down, hoping to catch up to the rest of the group. We began down the mountain, then up a short set of stairs—the last “up” stairs we would do all day!

We went through a short tunnel, a cleft in the rock. We passed another set of foreigners who nodded at us because that’s just what most Waygooks (“foreigners” in Korean) seem to do here. On the other side of the tunnel, a Korean woman who was clearly with the group of foreigners started to talk to me excitedly, exclaiming (as most people usually do) how beautiful my wife was. “Small face, big eyes! So lovely!” she burst out. I was laughing and nodding in agreement as I passed, stepping just off to the side of the stairway and onto the rubber tread that lined the stairs in order to prevent slipping. Ironically, it was on said tread that I rolled my ankle, bringing my full weight along with the weight of my heavy backpack I was toting onto my right ankle and knife of my foot. I shouted in surprising pain and Kristen ran after me, thinking I would fall down the stairs or off the mountain completely. People stopped to help, offering to give me bandages or to take the backpack, but I waved them away because if I am anything, it’s stubborn. “I’m totally fine”, I told them and Kristen, “I always weep this way.” And then: “my ankle bone always juts out through the skin like that.” I laughed.

Despite the slip of the foot, we walked back down the mountain, wincing and grimacing the whole way—me with my bruised ankle and Kristen with her aching arms, legs, and everything. Wrapped up in some sort of hilarious, masochistic mood, I continued to take pictures of everything, just like I was on some happy little stroll. “Oh look, dear, what nice rocks! Ooh, a waterfall! How quaint! No, no, I’m fine, I’ve learned to walk on my arms and luckily not of them are broken yet!”

Eventually and inexorably, we reached the bottom of the mountain and the end of the trail, found a cab driver quickly, and decided to get the heck outta there. We got into the cab and gave him our address. Relieved by the air conditioning and the dreamy thought of our horizontal home, we started back to Jangheung, away from Wolchulsan. Just as my eyes began to roll back into my head and my eyelids began to close, the driver piped up: “Your wife very beautiful!”

“Yes yes, thank you,” I muttered back. Because, like Wolchulsan and the difficulty we’d had hiking it, some things are always true—no matter what broken state of mind you happen to be in.