Chiak Mountain - I Can't Go On I'll Go On

For those of you who don't understand the title, pick up a copy of Bandslam. We watched it while eating delicious chicken on our first annual roommate night. If you aren't sure what this movie is, i'll just tell you that it falls somewhere between High School Musical and School of Rock (I enjoyed one and refuse to even watch the other, i'll let you figure out which). Anyways it was an enjoyable night even if the film choice didn't exactly capture my complete attention

The band name in the movie (I can't go on i'll go on), gives the most fitting description of our experience last weekend on Wonju's Chiak Mountain. It all started with my roommate Sung Jun suggesting that we go hiking on Saturday. Of course I loved the idea and since it was supposed to be a nice day Sung Jun suggested that we climb Chiak mountian in the National Park. On the internet it said the hike was about 2 and a half hours to the top, so we figured that would make for a nice little day trip. At 9:30am, we put on our jeans, sweatshirts and tennis shoes and headed out into some nice Spring weather. The sun was shining with a few clouds in the sky and the temperature was supposed to hit 50 later in the day. We arrived at the mountain and started climbing around 11am. The trail head said that our path was a distance of 5.4 Km to the top. That translates to just over three miles. As we started hiking a trail similar to that of the Gorge in Akron, I thought to myself "There is no way this will take 2.5 hours, this is going to be a cake walk..." Looking back I was only right about one thing, it didn't take 2.5 hours.

After about 40 minutes, we came to a bridge that crossed over a section of the creek and discovered a sign that said it was only 2.7 km to the peak. In case you're too lazy to do that math, that is half way to our destination. We had been gradually increasing in elevation, but there were still towering mountains on either side of us, and I was beginning to wonder if the view from our "mountain" would even put us in the position to see over the other real mountains. Thats when things went downhill... or more literally, uphill. The moment we crossed the bridge we were faced with a looming flight of stairs that continued into the heavens. Not really, it was just a really long flight of stairs, followed by another long flight of stairs, followed by a strip of rocks lined with steal cable's to grab onto as you cross because the drop off was so steep.

After crossing the narrow rock ledges and climbing the rope to the top of a large boulder, we realized there was a little bit of snow left on the ground. It was more annoying than anything, but it was proof that we were gaining altitude. Larger mountains still loomed around us and for the rest of our hike it always looked like we were almost to the top. However, every time we got to the top of a section, it revealed another large section yet to climb.

After a good hour of exhausting climbing over rocks, stairs and muddy paths, we arrived at another distance sign. We fully expected to be almost to the top, but strangely our sign read, "Birobong Peak - 2.2 km." There have been few moments I can remember that were as disheartening reading that sign. An hour of hard hiking / climbing had only gotten us 0.5 km after we trekked through 2.7 in 45 minutes. By that point there was a thin layer of slushy snow covering a lot of the ground, but the path was still mostly mud. Another climber, who was decked out in North Face climbing gear, informed us that we still had over an hour to the summit. By this point I had noticed numerous hikers loaded with day packs and extreme gear, but I figured it was because they climb regularly or they have the money to blow on fancy gear.

As we pressed forward our obstacles become more imposing and the snow continued to get deeper and more widespread. Long, steep, uphill sections lined with ropes, winding steep staircases, and more weird boulder sections made up the rest of the hike. As we climbed higher, I noticed that not only were we in the minority with our jeans and tennis shoes, we were actually the only ones not decked out from head to toe with expensive hiking jackets, snow pants, hiking poles, hiking boots with metal spikes, and daypacks with meals and hot water. By this point people were giving us strange looks and Wooseok's low-top converse shoes were completely soaked. I still don't know why, but we continued on...

Finally we got to a spot that was .5 km away. A group camped out there had made lunch and shared some food with us as well as hot coffee. By now there was about 6-7 inches of snow on the ground and everything was covered with snow. We could see where the summit was, but not the actual summit because there was a cloud resting over it. A large group came by and recommended that we turn around, but we had not come that far to stop short of the top.

Exhausted, soaked and unsure how we would get down, we arrived at the top of the mountain after 3+ hours of climbing. At a modest 2188m, the mountain gave us the view we had hoped for as it overlooked all the other peaks in the park. We took some pictures and to our great pleasure, we watched as the cloud moved off of our mountain and opened up an incredible view. More people shared their rations with us and took our picture before we headed back down. The way down only took 2.5 hours as we discovered we could use our flat bottomed shoes as skies and hold onto the ropes in a crouched position and simply slide down the most of the mountain paths. It was really fun and only moderately unintelligent.

I'm sure there's more to the story, but the pictures will have to do. If you ever find yourself climbing a mountain, swimming across an ocean, biking across a country, or anything else extreme; remember this phrase inspired by Dui from Bandslam, "I can't go on, i'll go on."