Hiking and Biking

I finally went hiking in Korea! This may not seem like a big feat, but in Korea, if you don't hike, you might as well just leave! It wasn't a big mountain or a long hike, but it was beautiful and a lot of fun.

A lot of the mountains in Korea also have palaces on top of them. Since important people lived in these palaces, they were guarded by stone walls, or fortress walls. These walls were then guarded by the soldiers to fight off any enemies. Many of the palaces and fortress walls are still standing and are really fun to see. The fortress wall/mountain we went to climb was called Namhansanseong Fortress. We, and by "we" I mean it was three of my co-workers and myself, went somewhat early on a Saturday morning to the palace. It wasn't far from Migeum, only about 30 min on the subway. Once we got there we took a bus to the top, well almost the top. Now that may seem like cheating, and it kind of was, but a lot of the fun of hiking the mountain is seeing the palace then hiking down. I do want to go back and hike up the whole thing but we didn't have enough time this day. Once we got to the top, the view was really cool. Unfortunately it was cloudy so we couldn't see all the way to Seoul but on most days you can see for miles.

We stayed at the top for a bit then made our way down. Down is almost as hard as up! The decline was pretty steep and our quads were hurting by the end, but it was so nice to be out of the city and in nature. It really reminded me of being in northern Minnesota, and it's so nice to know such places are so close to where we live.

Some would think a Saturday full of running and hiking would be enough exercise for one weekend, not me. At some point in time, the week before our hiking, I had agreed to a 100K bike ride, that's 60 miles, with a friend! I'm not really sure what I was thinking but since I had said I would do it, there was no backing out. I was really excited to go because I wanted to see if I could actually make 100K on a bike. We started out and rode along the river path that I always run on. We stayed on that until we hit the Han River in Seoul, about 25k in. We stayed on that path for a while and eventually it took us out of Seoul and onto a nice, quiet path with great scenery. We peddled for about another 10-15k or so and then we ran out of path and had to ride on the road. It wasn't too bad, drivers in Korea are really scared of bikers because they don't want to hit them, so they really keep their distance.

At this point, I really had no idea where we were. I trusted my friend, and he is pretty good with directions and he rides a lot so I wasn't worried. As it turned out, we were just about to bike up the same mountain I had just climbed the day before! By now we had gone about 60-70k and had been riding for about 4 hours, and I was getting really really tired!! Going up the mountain was tough, we took some breaks and rested our legs for a bit but finally made it to the top, or close to the top. The view was awesome! It was a clear day so we could see all the way to Seoul, which was really cool!!! Next time, I will bring my camera!

As tough as the uphill climb was, the downhill made it all worth it!! I have never gone so fast on a bike!! It was a bit scary, but more exhilarating than scary, and I would happily climb another mountain just to do that again!

After that, the rest of the ride back to Migeum was a piece of cake. We got back on the trail by the river and rode home. By this point, my butt was hurting pretty bad and I was pretty pooped, but it was a great day and a wonderful way to see Korea. I didn't quite make 100k, it was more like 91k, but either way I was amazed at the fact that I had rode a bike that far. Our total ridding time was 4 hours and 21 minutes and we averaged 20k an hour, not bad for a nonrider! But boy was I feeling it the next day!