Road Trip! (Day Seven ~ Wolchusan)
I woke up early in the jimjjilbang to get ready for Wolchusan. Since all my stuff is now quite ripe I’ve taken to washing my shirt and shorts in the washroom sink in an effort to have some clean clothes. Luckily before the trip, I spent money on some quality hiking stuff. A brief soap and rinse followed by wringing out the water leaves me almost dry as I hit the road. On the way out of Gwangju, I stop by a kimbap store and pick up two more for the road. I also stop by a convenience store to pick up water. A few minutes on the bike and I’m completely dry. The ride out to Wolchusan is mostly uneventful. There is a lot of nice scenery but I’m more concerned with getting to the park campground in time to set up my tent and stow away my gear prior to my friends arrival. After about an hour and a half, I come upon the town of Yeongam which marks the northern boundary of the park. It really is quite surprising; you’re driving along and everything is flat farmland, then suddenly a mountain seems to just rise up from nowhere. I had to stop and get some photos. It’s still pretty early and the mountain is partially shrouded in mist.
I also notice some wildlife here, a really big country spider. Thank goodness I didn’t wind up walking into any of these when I broke webs on my previous hikes. Man, I don’t like spiders. There was also a cute little caterpillar on the road, I almost stepped on this little guy! Instead, I got a really good close-up.
Up until now, I’ve been pretty lucky using language with the locals. When I reach the ticket booth things look promising, the ranger points me in the direction of the campground, gives me a pamphlet and tells me that ‘Wolchu Mountain is very famous and beautiful’. I ask him about the cloud bridge and he gives me a confused look and tells me ‘Wolchu Mountain is very famous and beautiful’. Uh-oh. I try asking in Korean but I’m using the wrong word for bridge; I’m asking about the ‘kyo’ when he expects me to ask about the ‘dari’. He looks a little more confused. Luckily I notice a picture of the bridge in the pamphlet and things are looking good again. I ask in Korean about how long the hike takes including the bridge and he explains about an extra three hours. We both apologize with a smile for our language short-comings; mine in Korean and his in English, finally I’m off to the campsite.
It turns out that I’ve got some free time because my friends were running a little late, so after I set up camp I take advantage and do some much-needed laundry. Just a bar of soap, a garden hose and some old-fashioned scrubbing. Once my clothes are cleaned and rinsed, I hang them up using a line between a couple of trees. It’s hot and sunny. So hopefully, I’ll have something clean and dry to wear tomorrow.
My friends show up a little after eleven o’clock. We get a bite to eat at a little restaurant which doubles as a convenience store. After we’ve finished our meal we stock up on water and I get another bandanna for my collection. We start hiking and the trail gradually gets more arduous as we progress. Although it’s steep, we seem to be going at a pretty good pace and are within a few hundred meters of the peak in no time. At this point, I split off from my friends. They won’t have time to check out the cloud bridge, but I’m really interested in it, and I also think I can meet them again at the bottom by taking a shorter route on the way back down from the peak. The scenery on this path is beautiful, the mist is gone now and it’s a beautiful day.
The path to the bridge is the most challenging part of the hike. It goes up, then down, then up, then… you get the idea. A couple of places have stairs while a couple of others have some rope.
On the other side of the mountain, the view is well worth the effort. I still haven’t reached the cloud bridge but I stop for a moment to catch my breath and enjoy my surroundings. Wolchusan may be the smallest National park in Korea, but it certainly isn’t lacking for beauty.
Finally, after one last set of nearly vertical steps, I reach the cloud bridge. The orange colour makes it stand out against the mountains and landscape. This bridge actually joins the park trails making it possible to travel through the entire park. Without it, the northeastern section would be cut off from the southern and western trails.
On my way back from the bridge I get a message from my friends. They’ve reached the peak and they’re on the way down now. As I reply to the message I drop the phone straight into a puddle of water! It could be worse I guess, I could have dropped it off the mountain. Out comes the sim card and battery. I dry everything as well as I can, but I get a strange message in Korean the next time I turn on the phone. I shut it down again. There’s nothing I can do for now. I continue towards the peak going up, down, up, down all along the way. Eventually, I make it back to where we split up. It’s only a few hundred meters to the peak, but it’ll still take some time due to the lay of the land. There’s no more up down up, this is all up up up. It may be tiring but it’s still fun all the same. I reach the peak; maybe an hour or more after my friends did. Without the phone, I can only guess at the time. There’s plenty of people on the peak so I ask one of them to look at the phone, and they’re able to fix it! ‘Sim card wet’ I’m told, I thanked my Samaritan and took a rest. The landscape stretches out from the peak in every direction, it’s amazing.
I practically ran down the mountain. I wanted to catch my friends but I also noticed the clouds rolling in while I was at the peak. It was going to rain. I could feel it in the air. I was hoping to get my clothes into the tent but as I came into the campground the flood gates opened and it poured. To make matters worse my kimbap split open in the bag and I had to throw it out. There weren’t any trash cans at camp so I had to walk back out to the ticket booth. After I disposed of the kimbap I washed my bag in the bathroom sink and headed back to camp. Although I was soaked, this kind of hard rain was actually really refreshing. I had gotten down off the mountain before my friends but we missed each other by a matter of minutes. I was cleaning up in the washroom when they caught their bus.