Hiking in Jirisan

My favorite trip so far has been to Jirisan National Park. Also super easy to get to from the Gwangju bus terminal, head for Gurye and you can take a direct bus to Hwaeomsa temple or in Gurye take a local bus to the temple which is about 6k or so from downtown. Gurye is a beautiful country village surrounded by the maginificent mountains of Jirisan Park. We had a goal of hiking to Nogodan Peak, which is about 6k from Hwaeomsa temple. Because we arrived late on Monday we didn’t take the climb up the mountain thinking we would loose light before we reached the shelter at the top. The shelter takes reservations online and most people hike up and spend the night at the shelter and then hike down the mountain the next day or continue on to the highest peak in Jirisan which is Cheonhwangbong. We had stopped at the temple to ask a monk how long it would take for us to climb to Nogodan peak and were told that the shelter was closed due to the heavy snow fall at the top. (Whether it was closed or not?) We can guess that it was open because the next day we saw many hikers carrying sleeping mats and sleeping bags on their backs. So I’m guessing the shelter was open but not being serviced with an open provisions store or running water/electricity? The monk also warned us that the hike was too strenuaous and dangerous for us without crampons because of all the ice, which is the same advice we got from the park ranger (who takes the admission for entering the park). She was adament that we don’t attempt to climb to Nogodan because without crampons we would be in danger. Ok she didn’t speak English but her body language put off some exaggerated signals for alarm and danger, lots of Xs with the arms. But would this stop us? Or would all the posters of black bears with open mouths and sharp teeth and warnings of bears next to emergency call posts? No of course not, but we didn’t head up the first day, because it was close to evening. So we went back into the village to look for a cheap hotel.

We stopped in a general store and asked the shop keeper about a place to stay, he called his friend. Scott arrived and to our surprise spoke English and had chosen the name Scott ( I really should choose a Korean name). He had lived in Seattle for 12 years and owns a gas station on Broadway, he laughed exuberantly at the ridiculousness of Broadway( if you’ve ever been to Seattle you know it’s nothing like any place in Korea- for so many reasons). So we went to his hotel called the Little Prince (061-783-4700 www.littleprincefamily.com). It’s a really great place with cute rooms. Clean and warm and reasonably priced, actually the off season price was really fair. So we settled in and with Scott’s help ordered pizza and pigged out, watched cable tv, and got rest for our climb the next day.

Our room had windows which looked out over a stream and onto the mountain. Next to the hotel is the bear academy. Zoologists are working to repopulate the bears in Jirisan so they raise bears in captivity and allow them to learn survival skill in a safe place and then release them into the wild. I hear 50+ bears live in Jirisan, some of the bears raised in captivity do not pass the test of living on their own so they come back to the bear academy where they live safely and hopefully happily. So Tuesday morning we set off to hike to Nogodan Peak. It was a beautiful morning and the air was fresh.

Feeling great we meet a monk on the trail which starts near the temple. He speaks English and stops to say hello, he’s so smiley and sweet wishing us luck on our hike, saying we will have no problems. He begins to get a little awkward and is lingering around so I say "ok we’re going now", he continues to linger so I ask "is it ok to take a picture so we can remember him", he’s happy to do this because it gives him his chance to get closer to me, and then the weirdness happens, I get a kiss on the cheek and felt up by the monk. I had the impulse to hit him with his walking stick but instead I said "no, not ok"and just handed it to him. He wouldn’t make eye contact with me after that. Lucie says I made that monks year (I really hope so) , well if he really was a monk, maybe he was just posing as a monk to get in and molest strangers. The rest of our hike was so amazing really beautiful forest including bamboo groves, decidous trees and some sorts of evergreens . We saw many hikers which kept my alarm over the 50+bears away.

Everyone did have crampons but we had two walking sticks so we felt pretty stable. Exhausted with sore muscles we reached the top.

We were above a cloud layer so the view had to be inferred but was beautiful. The weather at the top was crazy cold with strong wind, so we didn’t linger, we began our climb down and stopped to have a leftover pizza party, rubbery cheese never tasted so good. Buzzing with good feelings from our beautiful hike we got to the bus station to find our ride to Gwangju about to leave. The next day our calves were feverishly sore to the touch but it was all worth it.