And yes literally lost this time, but more on that later. Gwanaksan is one of the top five beautiful mountains in Gyeonggi Province. An alternative name of Gwanaksan is Seogeumgang, as it shares several spectacular rock formations as the much larger mountain Geumgangsan in North Korea. Gwanaksan forms the southern border of Seoul, separating it from Gyeonggi Province. There are several hiking trails which stretch from Sadang Station in Seoul, to Hwaseong fortress in Suwon. These are quite intense and unnecessary but will give you a good workout. The mountain was one of my favorite day hikes and I often went with my very dear friend Olivia.
One of the more recognizable structures on Gwanaksan is Yeonjudae, which is set as the featured image. It is a long hike up, and if you will notice all pictures are from the autumn, as the summer is too oppressively hot to make this climb, and more on that later.The views from Yeonjudae are stunning and a deposed prince is credited with its construction, to long for his lost thrown.
Most if not all Korean mountains don’t require you to have any specialized hiking equipment, nevertheless, nearly every Korean hiker will be fully kitted out with hiking coat, visors, walking poles and carabiners dangling at their sides. To climb in Korea is a serious affair and the sideways glance at a foreigner in sneakers and t-shirt wearing street clothes does seem out of place. Most Koreans go all out when they go climbing, go big or don’t go at all. That said, there are many men who were dressed a little more casually that myself, sitting, drinking makkeoli and slapping each others backs. Good times.
Now, the hike is pretty straight forward, nothing too grueling and after a few trips one learns the landmarks. One may also start to see some signage for things usually missed, or maybe one needs a change of scenery. On his particular trip, we brought along a new teacher, to get her out some more and explore the sites which would likely be less trodden. Also in the name of something new we decided to venture down a supposedly well marked trail to parts unseen. This was also August, not the usual time of the year I would recommend hiking Gwanaksan.
After completing our normal hike to the top, Yeonjubong, we decided to try this other trail which led back to Seoul. Yeah, we got lost. We opted for what was supposed to be an easier climb as not one of use could be considered athletic, and Olivia and myself are especially not fit. A nice gentle descent was something we all looked forward to. After about 20 minutes though, the telltale signs of a well trodden trail seemed to vanish, it was if the trail had simply disappeared. I suspect we should not have taken the nice open route and taken the slightly steeper trail but at least the views were spectacular. As we continued on I noticed that there were several fox holes and dug out sections, remains of a military training exercise, which should have also clued us in that we were a little off the main trail. As a side note, many of the mountains around Seoul have these installations some in concrete, I might post about this later, though there is a concentration of them on the hillsides along the old fortress wall of Hanseong, the old name of Seoul.
It was burning hot by the time we reached a rocky clearing. Seoul lay before us, so it at least provided us with the proper direction to go in, however we had also ran out of water, even though I had made it a point to have a filled bottle for the trip. No matter how well I try to plan these outings I always fail to bring enough water. I swear I could lug a whole tanker full of water and still come up short. After some short deliberation we decided to take a route which headed towards some apartments, before stumbling back onto something resembling a trail. This wasn’t quite a dead end but we improvised and crossed a dry creek bed and found a proper trail down to a point a few hundred meters from Sadang Station. Note the trail we were aiming for was on the other side of the ridge we were traveling down. We discovered this as we made if to the crossing and saw the signage leading to the trail south to Gwanaksan.
More mountain adventures to come.
Lost in Linklandiya 
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