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Getting to this park was easier than Byeon-san Bando. We took the subway for a half hour to Cheonan, then a bus to Gongju, a small town outside the park. The bus from there ran into Gyeryong town, and I think the ticket lady was trying to tell me to tell the bus driver that we were going to Gap-sa Buddhist temple, since it's right outside the park, but I thought at the time she was telling me that that's where we should get off. So the bus driver called out "Gyeryong-san" to us when he stopped there, and after kind of screwing around for a few minutes trying to figure out where we were (conclusion: middle of nowhere), we started walking toward what looked like the most likely direction of the park. Then we saw a sign that said it was five kilometers away. We saw two taxis, but there were going the wrong way. Taxi drivers hate turning around in this country, even though it's not a major problem. So we walked it.
Here are a couple pictures of the view along the way:
When finally we reached the park in midafternoon, we paid our combo national park/temple admission fee (only like 2000 won, I think--a couple bucks), bypassed the temple (boring), and started onto the trail. We soon realized, unlike the last park, that this one is made up almost entirely of rock and water. Almost all the dirt is taken up by the trees. Can't waste it on trails. The trail followed, and sometimes became part of, a stream, which was pretty cool, except for the occasional wet shoe part.
We stopped and had lunch on rocks in a stream again this time. The big rock in the middle below is where we sat:
We got a lot of laughs as people walked by. I think it was because it was harder to get to these rocks than the ones at Byeon-san. We actually had to take off our shoes and wade in freezing water to the other side. I doubt most Koreans would have thought of doing that.
Here's more stream:
Is this part of the path? I don't remember. It must be.
Sometime in the late afternoon we hit one of the big waterfalls in the park, Yongmun waterfall. It was cool, but not nearly as big as Jikso Waterfall was.
The is one of the smaller falls that shoots off from the pool above:
And I think these are the lower falls below that:
Within the cracks of the cliff to the side of the waterfall, on the path, are these little rock piles Buddhists put up:
Some dude asked Kent to take his picture by the falls, so we asked him to to the same for us:
We didn't stay too long, as it was getting on in the day, it was very cloudy, and there didn't seem to be much chance of finding an out of the way campsite very easily. Remember, camping is illegal in Korean national parks. Try at your own risk.
So we went up the rocky, often wet, trail, keeping an eye out for someplace to get off the trail and find a clearing or SOMEthing. Then it started raining a bit. We pulled out my bag's attached water barrier (or whatever you call it), but Kent had to put a trash bag over his bag. We climbed a helluva steep and unending slope, up rocky stairs and on rocky ramps. The ramps are supposed to make for a smooth climb, I guess, but really they're just dangerous, because they get slippery in the rain and they provide no traction or support anyway. Stupid trail builders.
I really thought we'd never get to the top. It seemed so far away. Then it started raining some more. We were almost there. There was no GORP to eat along the way. I was pissed. Then Kent got to the top, finally, and I believe his exact words, after we had gone through all this rock and hadn't seen any flat clearing, only deep inclines, were, "Holy crap, it's a friggin' FIELD!" And I laughed and repeated, "It's a field," becase that seemed so impossible. But it was a field at the top. This, I think, was Geumjandi Pass.
Here is the view of the stairs from the top. Notice how they drop down out of view:
This is the view from the top of the stairs of the field:
Here is the field from the side. I don't know what the symbol in the middle is for.
Because we were now in a large clearing on top of a mountain, it was very windy and rainy. That sucked. We were tired, it was cold and raining, and it was getting dark now, and we had no other prospect for a campsite, so we had to emergency camp next to the field. Right next to some picnic tables, haha.
Here's our campsite, the next morning:
Luckily, there were some densely grown trees between the tent and the field on the side we came from. If hikers came from that trail, they couldn't see us at all, unless they looked back as they passed. Anyone coming from the other side would see us, but since that was the longer, harder trail, it was less likely anyone would come from that way. Just the same, we set the alarm for 7:30, figuring no one would get up that high much before then.
As it turned out, there were a few extreme early risers. Around 6am, still wide awake from my inability to sleep pretty much anywhere but home, I heard a hiker come upon us and laugh. Then, I think to warn us that Korea was awake, he started making a bunch of guttural noises and such that didn't seem to be natural or personally necessary. They seemed to be just for us. So I woke up Kent and said we'd better get up before some park ranger passes by or something. I was glad to be up, even at dawn. I was freezing. Rough night.
Next on our agenda was to climb the rest of the way up the nearest peak, which I thing was Gyemyeongjeong-sa. It was about 786m above sea level, as I recall. I think that's the highest I've ever been on the ground. It was kind of hellish getting up. Very steep.
Here are some views from the peak. We could actually see the clouds moving through the mountains, which was pretty cool. The ridge below is why Gyeryong-san gets its name--the name refers to the ridge on the neck of a rooster. We had planned on going over at least part of the ridge as we looked at the map, but having gone up that first peak, I decided my body wasn't going to make it over all those others. I just don't have enough practice, plus my backpack is missing a support frame, which I may have mentioned in the last backpacking blog. This causes the weight to go into my shoulders, not my hips, and the bag to go over to Kent. I could carry his bag all day.
After visiting the peak for a few minutes, we reevaluated our plan for the day, and decided to go back down the way we came for a little bit, then take a trail toward the entrance at the east end of the park. We had entered at the west end and had planned to make a big loop and go back there, but it was going to take too long and be too much work.
Here's me going down the last set of stairs before the peak. I think there were about five or six stories high, in three zigzagging sections. Super.
Along the new trail, we encountered a Buddhist memorial? There was a little wood and glass case where you could light candles (there was a wooden box full of them).
There was also another rock pile site next to the tower:
We met another one of those old Korean guys who speaks good English because he went to the US. He started telling us about the peak we had just been to, and said we should follow him, but we told him we had just been there. Not realizing we had done most of the work the day before, he was pretty impressed.
Here are a couple pictures of a little stream we walked beside for a while. You can see how rocky the trails are next to it.
Here we stopped for a few minutes to rest. You can see a dirt trail in the picture, and I got a little excited for a minute to be leaving the rocks, but no, that was not our trail. We still had to walk on the rocks in a slightly different direction.
This is a sideways picture of a stream that I didn't catch on my picture rotating rounds before posting. Just turn your head to the right.
Water, water, water.
Here is me, somewhere in the park, on Saturday. I wore my glasses on Sunday.
Here is me, somewhere in the park, on Sunday:
Kent took this extended-exposure picture. He loves that shit.
Here is the second, smaller set of falls we saw on the trip. We had wanted to go to another big waterfall that was slightly out of the way of the trail to the exit, but on the way I decided to not try for that, because I had a headache and was tired, and Kent was getting grumpy from having to carry my atrocious backpack. These falls were good enough, though. We had lunch on the rocks again, below the bridge.
Here are some videos of the waterfalls, streams, and a bird's nest we saw:
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