Hiking has slowly grown into a activity I’ve come to enjoy more and more. It started a bit in high school with light trails in the woodsy parts of South Jersey and easy paths on the AT. I even got a little in when I visited Northern California and light stuff around Connecticut. But coming to Korea, a country with a bounty of mountains everywhere, it would honestly be heresy to not take part in this unofficial national pastime (Korea’s national sport is actually StarCraft, yes, a video game).

So this Saturday, I joined my second Meetup to climb up 불암산 (Bulamsan mountain) in 남양주시 (Namyangju City). CIK is a pretty well accompanied outdoors groups. The numbers present gave strong support to that fact. Taking a gander at our rendezvous point, it looked there were about 45 heads present before we boarded a local bus to the base of the mountain.

The numbers were also very diverse. There a solid number of Koreans, but you had your American soldiers, European researchers, Latin American expats all there. I would say every continent, excluding Antarctica, was present for the hike.

After getting limber, we were off. Fortunate for us, Bulamsan was not a-walk-in-the-park kind of hike but one that actually got you sweating right off the bat. About 15 minutes into the trail, we already needed to pull out ropes to scale up the side of one rock.

But we scaled it, with smiles on our faces (or maybe just a good few of us). The trail actually involved peak amongst peak. I think we were already over five midway through the trail. We ended up climbing and scaling more than going through trails. We even got a slight ridge in before stopping for lunch 3/4 of the way up.

Following lunch, we got to go through a part of the path with a number of boulders. Here, the IH leadings us shined ever brighter than before. All of them had been around on this Earth much more than we collectively had been but they bouldered like champions. My new priority goal is to be at their fitness level when I grow old. One can dream.

A few more absurdly angled scales up, we reached the summit. Upon reaching it, the first sigh of relief was seeing the easy trail that one could take to up to and down from the summit. The second sigh came form the breath taking view one had all around them.

We took a few moments to recuperate and let the setting sink in. People turned  goofy and took photos all around. Obviously, a group hike would be incomplete without taking a few group photos with complimentary peace signs.

I always enjoy going up mountains but alway hate coming down. The pain on your knees the way down becomes pretty apparent and gravity is not always your friend as slipping becomes way more frequent on the way down. Nevertheless, we got back down to the town ready to relax off with some good food and 막걸리. Both of which were had and accompanied with conversation to learn a little more about each other’s time in Korea.