Hiking Achasan

This past weekend we were looking for an easy mountain to climb, since this is only the 3rd mountain for the kids to climb.  I had narrowed it down to two.  Achasan & Iwangsan, after doing more research I realized Hubby and I have already done Iwangsan, so we decided to go with Achasan.  The official website of Korean Tourisum says 'Mt. Achasan is an easy 30-minute hike, which is perfect for beginners'.  Since we were doing such an easy mountain we invited our friends the T's along.  Our friends were game however the did tell us they needed to be home by 4PM so they could go to bible study.  I told them no problem, this was a quick hike and we were leaving our house at 11AM.   Here are the kids at the begining of our hike.

These guys passed us about 10 minutes into our hike....not something you really want to see.

The top wasn't very far away....

Hubby and I at the top.

I know I have told you about the work out parks that are all over Korea, but I don't know if I have told you they are all over the mountains as well as in the city.  If you feel like you aren't getting that great of a workout just hiking, never fear, soon enough you will happen upon a workout park where you can take a break from hiking to do sit-ups, pull-ups, weight lifting and more.  In the next picture Hubby is torturing Boy 1 with sit-ups!

Since the hike was so short, (it only took us about 20 minutes to get to the top) we decided to continue on another path.  This is what the website said...' It takes about one hour to go up and down the summit of Mt. Achasan. If you plan to start at Mt. Achasan and climb down Mt. Yongmasan, it will take about 2 to 2 and a half hours. "  We didn't really know where we were going, but we knew we were not ready to stop just yet.

The views were beautiful.

At one point we ran into this man selling scarves, backpacks and more.  Humm..I wonder how he got all this stuff up here...

Hubby showing up all the old men at another 'work-out' spot....

Along this path, about 2 hours into our hike, our friend Tammy mentioned she had not seen any other people in quite some time.

Then in this area, as we were trying to steer the kids away from the slick rocks and towards safety, Tammy hit one of those slick rocks, lost her footing and down she went, and HARD I might add.  I thought we were going to have to call those rescue people we saw at the beginning of our hike.  Luckily, Tammy was able to get up and continue on, thank goodness, although I am pretty sure she had a nice big bruise on her bum the next day.

Finally after about 3 hours of hiking, our scout, Boy 1 yelled out..."I see cars"!  And all the little people ran!!!

Too bad we came down on the other side of the mountain & had no idea where we were.  The good thing about hiking in Seoul, no matter where you come down, you always end up in the worlds 2nd largest city, so really you cannot get lost.  We ended up at a very populated tourist attraction, so we hopped in a (2) cabs and headed back to the subway station. 

At this point we were all famished and the T's had missed their bible study so we stopped in at a local Korean restaurant for lunch.

I'm not sure it the T's will ever go on another hike with us again...we got home at 5:30PM. 

Moral of this story:  Hubby should always wear his super cool Suunto watch so we will always know where we are. (Although it was way fun and we were NEVER once scared that we would not make it back.) Oh, and maybe next time we should pack a few snacks.