Byeonsan Bando National Park, Day One

Friday, June 6 was Memorial Day in Korea, so I got the day off. This was my last three day weekend until mid-August, and I don't get summer vacation until the end of July, so I had to make this one last. I went backpacking in Byeonsan Bando National Park with my friend Kent. The park is in Jeollabuk-do, a province on the west coast, and the park is directly west of Ulsan. I took the bus and it takes a couple transfers to get to where I wanted to be from here.

The first leg was a four and a half hour bus trip from Ulsan to Jeonju. Heather and her husband dropped me off at the Express Bus Terminal, which was nice, since lugging a huge backpack on a city bus to get there would have sucked.

Since I had drank a cup of juice, 3/4 cup of awful oriental medicine, and a bowl of soup for breakfast that morning (it was pretty much the only food I had), I knew it wise to stop in the bathroom before we left. But once wasn't enough, apparently. I felt the urge just ten minutes later, right before we left. There wasn't time. Korean buses don't have lavatories on them, either. They just make stops at rest areas every couple hours. So I had to hold it. Let me tell you, I almost died. Never have I had to piss so bad and had to hold it so long. It was two hours and twenty minutes before we stopped, and I bolted off the bus. I was sweating and almost crying, and I ended up sitting up at the front of the bus, on the floor next to the bus driver, so I wouldn't have to wait for anyone to get out of my way. I'm pretty sure my bladder almost exploded.

After that, the second half of that leg was fine, except for some minor abdominal pain that went away after a while.

Once in Jeonju, I met up with Kent and had a little lunch. Jeonju is supposed to have some of the best food in the country. It was pretty good, but nothing particularly special. I had more soup, haha. Only because there was a picture of this soup I really like on one of the restaurant fronts, and I knew the next bus ride was only an hour and twenty minutes.

That leg was from Jeonju to Buan. Buan is a small town, and the closest major place to the park. From there, we bought a bus ticket to a little place called Gomso, on the southern tip of Byeonsan Bando. We waited for a while, and then Kent decided to ask one of the drivers when our bus would come (by showing him the ticket). The bus driver gave him an answer that either meant the bus was coming in an hour or at 10:10pm. Either way, we didn't want to wait. We still had to hike into the park from Gomso and find a camping spot off the trail.

So we took a taxi. The driver drove us for about a half hour and dropped us off at the bus station, I think. We had joked that Gomso was going to be a store, a restaurant, a school, a post office, and six houses, but it was a decent size town. Old looking. We figured out which direction to walk to get to a park entrance and started. We hit one dead end, where I took this picture:






That's the park in the background. Everyone who saw us in this town stared at us. Not only were we white folk, we were white folk carrying around massive backpacks in the middle of town for some reason.

On the way there, once we were out of the main part of town, we saw this kiln site (with graves), across from a farm with lots of barking dogs. I forgot what the name of it was, but here it is:



We finally got to the park entrance sometime in the evening. Maybe around 5:30 or 6. We walked onto the main trail, but found a smaller trail shortly thereafter and took that one. The point was to find a place far enough off the trail that we could actually pitch a tent and sleep without being bothered. Koreans don't really camp, so we had the element of doing the unexpected on our side. Less chance of getting caught, and even if we were caught, we're just stupid foreigners. I did notice there was a place called Seokpo Camping Park just inside the park, which we passed on the way to the entrance, but we were using that as a backup plan if we couldn't find any place ourselves.

So on the smaller trail, we ended up going off it and just roaming through a bunch of thick flora and not really getting anywhere except into a riverbed that soon started to have a stream in it. So that was a bust. We found another small trail and it led up a mountain that almost killed me. I realized partway up that I haven't climbed anything since I was a kid. I think it's been like fifteen years. So I was almost dead by the time we got up to the top. We would go up the path a bit, and it would turn off, and then we'd get to where we could see around the bend, and yep, more steep climbing. I was already tired. But we ate some GORP and crackers on the way up and took a couple rest stops for a couple minutes and made it to the top. We saw this pile of rocks on the way up:



Is it a grave, or some other special site? We just don't know. But it's a pretty cool pile of rocks.

Upon reaching the peak, we saw a small wooden fence blocking off another smaller trail to the left, and the sign pointed people to the right. So naturally going over the fence was the better idea. Not too far into the prohibited trail was a pretty great camping spot, so we took it and started setting up camp.

Here is me at the peak of that mountain:



Here is our camp, complete with a lead-rope to the "bathroom" for night trips, just in case:



This is a little clearing where we did our cooking and eating, next to the clearing with the tent (with bear-bag below):



This is a view from our campsite:



Not too shabby. The reason this trail was fenced off of course was that it was right next to a massive dropoff. The bear bag in the picture above was hanging right over a big crevasse, which was scary to go near, so Kent had to put up and take down the bear bag himself. Screw that.

But don't worry, we tented far enough for there to be no danger of falling off, and the rope was there to lead us in the dark (we didn't even end up using it, though).

It was freezing Friday night. I was so cold I didn't even really sleep. It also rained a little bit, but not enough to cause a problem. Our bags were covered in a poncho, and the bottoms weren't even wet the next morning. Except for the not sleeping and being cold part, it was a pretty good camping experience, my first time camping without a campground.