06.22.2005 –
I have just gone through the most
physically demanding and draining day I have had in many years. I went to
It turned out to be the most
strenuous hike/climb I’ve ever been on—and on a very hot day (although,
fortunately, it was mostly in the shade).
On the way up, beginning around
Also on the way up, I saw many
Korean rock ferns growing in their natural habitat, which was interesting to me
because I have one that has been growing ever larger in our garden for the past
few years.
I quickly noticed that a majority
of the hikers in the park were Japanese, most of them wearing silk scarves with
Japanese characters on them tied around their heads. Here is yet another way in which
As
I got higher, the hike turned into the closest thing to real mountain climbing
that I’ve ever done. There were many
places where you have to hold onto whatever you can find—a tree, a limb, a
root, or a rock, to pull yourself up and keep from slipping back. At several
points, I had to use a rope to pull myself up.
But I reached the summit (only 720 m or 2362 feet), the last part by
pulling myself by a rope while moving my feet up a rock wall. The view was beautiful (despite the smog
shrouding the view of the city below), and it felt good to have done it. I decided, though, that was accomplishment
enough for my mountain-climbing career.
The
I had to do a very short bit of
mild repelling getting down from the rock summit.
Then the problems began. As the guidebook suggested, I took a
different route to go down. The
guidebook said to follow particular signs in English, but at several crucial
places the trail signs turned out to be only in Korean. At many other points, it wasn’t clear which
way the main trail went and there were no signs or markers at all.
As a result, I missed the trail I
was supposed to be on and, I’m sure, made some other wrong turns. I was somewhat lost, although it was always
clear that a way could be found to get down the mountain and once down out of
the park and into the city that surrounds it.
What eventually became less clear was whether I would succeed in doing
so before it got dark.
Worse than that was that going
downhill on the thin layer of loose sand pellets covering hard ground proved to
be much harder than going up. I thought my shoes were
good for hiking, but they turned out not to be well suited for this
footing. I needed to have a pointed
metal hiking stick. I slipped numerous times, getting several scrapes on my
arms and hands, pretty much destroying the seat of my pants, and scraping up my
belt. After a while, at many places
where there was a downward incline and no trees to hold on to, I decided the
only thing to do was to sit and slide down.
It seemed a better choice to do that intentionally than to fall again,
get more scrapes and bruises, and wind up sliding down anyway.
I kept coming to places where I
was unsure where the trail went. I had
taken three bottles of water with me, which would have been sufficient for a
5-hour hike, but by now I was almost out of water. My growing concern, though, was that it was moving
towards evening and I knew I wouldn’t be able to follow a trail in the dark.
Then a Japanese woman came
along. She spoke a few words of English
and was able to confirm that I was on a trail to a park exit. That gave me the encouragement I needed. A few minutes later, she came back to me (she,
with proper equipment, a stick, and experience, was moving much faster than
I). I’m sure the way I looked—soaked
everywhere with sweat, the back of my jeans covered with dirt,
exhausted—brought out her sense of pity.
She offered me one of her bottles of cool green tea, which I gratefully
accepted. I would have made it without
the tea, but it helped greatly.
By this time, another Buddhist
monk was doing evening chants, and hearing them also helped. When I got back to level ground and near a
park exit, I came upon a Buddhist cemetery and took some pictures.
I emerged from the park near a
highway, with the subway running above ground parallel to it on the other
side. I figured that if I followed along
the road by the tracks, I had to come to a station sooner or later. My immediate need, though, was for liquid,
and at first I couldn’t find a Korean grocery.
When I did, the woman in it spoke no English and so didn’t know what I
was saying when I asked her about finding a subway. But I was able to drink three small cans of
Gatorade, a can of iced coffee, and a bottle of water.
After finishing the drinks, I
continued along the road until I found a station and made my way back to the
hotel.
To paraphrase Willie Loman’s Uncle Ben, “I went into the jungle at
RSM