The Foot of the Mountain

A few hours back, I wrote a long and amusing anecdote to accompany the picture above.
Alas however, I accidentally pressed backspace at the wrong time, the whole thing was lost, and my ongoing affair of hatred with Lucy's laptop continues.

It began by saying that today was single handedly one of the hardest and exhausting, but easily one of the most rewarding days of my life.

We climbed Seoul's Bukhan Mountain - and it was quite the challenge.
Standing 2744 feet tall, it was a steep, neverending wall of loose rock and boulders. When, after the exhausting climb, we reached an old fortress wall and a clear blue sky, we assumed we'd reached the top. We were horrified when we looked over our shoulders though, and were greeted with an unfeasably steep climb up gigantic, smooth boulders to the summit - a tiny, exposed area of rock high above our heads.

The pair of us are pretty scared of heights, and our initial thoughts were that the climb was way beyond us. It was a mixtire of steel ropes to pull you up the rock, jagged naturally-made steps and the odd exposed walkway.
In reality the climb is nothing more than ten minutes of tricky excercise, but 840 metres above Seoul, where the city looked like a tiny lego board, and with the wind whistling around our ears, it was a tad unnerving.
My dodgy knee had given way half way up the mountain though, and I'd virtually dragged myself up the remaining half. I vowed to make it to the top.

It soon became obvious that my trainers were useless on the slippery boulders, so I made the decision to climb up barefoot. To my surprise the Koreans I passed on their way down praised and encouraged my shoeless attempt, rather than giving me the mocking I'd expected.
It was a liberating feeling, and reminded me how great being barefoot feels, as well as how much we underestimate the power of our feet, in a society where we constantly wrap our feet in a protective shell.
Suddenly I was able to virtually run up the mountain, and was way more agile than those wearing hundreds of dollars worth of equipment.

Lucy, after an initial wobble herself, eventually joined me at the very windy peak for unbelivable views of the city and the mountains. It felt like we were right up in the heavens.
Admittedly, despite being a slightly tricky climb, there were ajumas (older Korean ladies) aplenty at the top, but our absolute fear of being high up made our reaching the summit feel like a real achievement.

On the way back down we met a very interesting man who used to work in the mountain range close to our city, Jirisan National Park. He had recently quit however, to devote his time to organising protests against government plans to build cable cars up every major mountain in the country. Admirable stuff.
We'd been thinking of heading to Jirisan next week, and he showed us a route through the mountains that takes several days, with shelter being provided by heated camping huts placed sporadically throughout the mountains.
If my knee plays ball, we might just give it a try.