Achasan Mountain

Last sunday my work mates and I made a company sponsored trip to Aschasan. Though it must be said that I was under the impression that Aschasan was more of a hill or even a slight incline than a full fledged moutain. Trust me, this bad boy was no hill and definitely all mountain.
Somehow I neglected to note that 2,020 meters to the top sign.
Aschasan is located in Eastern Seoul and it really is a great spot to get away from the hustle and bustle of city life. Just a short jaunt up the mountain and you leave all those beeping cars, zoombing taxis and sky scraping buildings behind. Though you don’t escape the pedestrians because everyone and their grandmother seemed to be hiking the mountain.
At the bottom of the mountain families, couples, and friends packed their gear and readied their hiking boots for the journey. People were decked out in their sporty track suits, canes, visors and backpacks stuffed with water, snacks, blankets, and probably portable furniture (more on that later). I felt a little underdressed and unprepared considering I was only in jeans and sneakers with just a bottle of power aide. I’m glad I had that bottle because I needed it later on.

Here Angela commiserates with an Ajoshi who looks as excited as she is to conqueor Achasan!
Photo Op time: Coworkers posing for the camera. We’re all smiling now because we didn’t know what awaited us.

Steven having his Top Model Moment….
Which inspired everyone else.

I didn’t expect to see so many people truding up the hill. Even more unexpected was the protesters, I thought they were protesters, but evidently they were promoting park cleanliness and enviormentalism.
Though I thought it would be better if they were actually picking up the garabage instead of waving signs around informing us about the garbage that needed to be picked up, right?
Here we all are on the easy part of the trail. It was definitely a great day to be outdoors.

I know, I know it looks like a cake walk and I was practically running up to take photos, because I thought at this point we were almost to the top.


Here is where I thought we were at the top. Wrong. This is also the point where I got lost. Fortunately, I found Steve. Unfortunately, we continued to be lost together and forged ahead up the mountain while everyone else took a little detour around the top.


Still not the top. Almost there though. I seriously couldn’t believe we hadn’t caught up to the others. How could thirty or so people move so fast? We figured they must be setting some drill sergeant like pace.
Beautiful, yes?
I think the H stands for Hell. This is another peak but we still had further to go.
Hmmm, I love Korea because only in Korea would the people put a playground and gym on top of a mountain because you know you have’t burned up enough of those Krispy Kreme calories by clawing your way up to the top.
Steve got in a quick workout just to keep the blood flowing.
This is as high as we went.I guess we could have scaled the pyramid tower.
Going down is treacherous but fun, though isn’t it always?
That little structure is where we thought we should have been. Though it turns out that even that was the wrong place. Little did we know!
Another unexpected thing I noticed was that our fellow hikers would camp out on the most unlikely of places. Do you see that precarious outcropping of rock poised next to that sheer drop off? Yup, wouldn’t that be a perfect place to camp for lunch! Koreans have no fear. I would have needed safety harnesses and a parachute to get me on some of the spots I saw people having a picnic on.

Another gym. Now I know why the folks in Korea are so dang slim and trim. I need to get on this Achasan Mountain training program.

Getting lost turned out to be a lot of fun.
After we made it down our director found us and scooted us off to the place where everyone else was busy having a late lunch.Chickens +=Delicious!


The place was really out of the way and rustic, but the food was outstanding.

Now we just need a new Mountain to tackle