Seununsan Climbing Weekend
This past weekend I went down to Seununsan which is a provincial park on the south western part of the province I'm in, Jeollabuk-do. I was certainly impressed with the colors of fall, as I think we were there during the peak, as my photos should demonstrate. Anyways it was a bit of a foreign climbers gettogether, and I went down with my friend Laura who lives in Iksan here, but she had not been climbing in aobut a year, so she really needed to go.
We met up with Sonia and Peter (who had only been in Korea for 1 month). Peter is a great guy and has a similar background to mine, so I look forward to travelling a bit more with him. They were late meeting us at the bus terminal in the closest town to the park, so Laura wasn't all too happy about me making her get up at 6 in the morning to catch a 7:20 bus, but we got to have a yummy breakfast of Pumpkin porridge while we waited. So we took a bus to the park and headed straight up to the climbing area, which was a bit of a hike and climb in itself. There were many Koreans out, and those guys were pulling on some hard stuff. We set up a couple routes and did some top roping, but nothing too serious. I ended up coming down with a bit of a migrain in the late afternoon partially caused I think by cigarette smoke (more on that in a bit). So I headed down and took a nap in the tent. Not soon after I laid down a heavy rain came out of nowwhere. I was relieved not to be out having to hike in the down poor, and I had a good rest. The group came back checked in on me and then most of them ended up drinking heavily under a tarp. I made some soup and went to sleep. The next morning it was still raining so a few of us went to the temple and had some tea in the tea house, which was some of the best I've ever had (Honey and Pine shoot tea). No use in staying out to go climbing when it was raining so I took off with Laura.
Rest of the photos
On the bus ride bike we had a nice conversation about my acquaintence Sonia. We were talking about how she is a vegetarian chain smoker who enjoys rock climbing. This chick really does smoke a lot. It was one after another while we were hiking. Also she is a bit of an agressive do right, anti corporation, I'm better than you kind of person. For example when Peter mentioned going to Costco to get some foreign foods she spent 10 minutes spouting off on how evil of a corporation it and other things like Walmart are so bad for the world, and he was all the while saying I hear what you're saying now drop it. Now I know I can be like this sometimes as well with specific things, but at least I don't drone on about it to no end. What else is interesting is she is always talking about not wanting to support international conglomerates, but she smokes 1-2 packs of Marlboro cigarettes a day... Hello Phillip Morris, international conglomerate that used to advertise to kids. Oh and everytime I have travelled with her I always come back with a cough that takes me over a week to shake off, so I blame the evil cigarette company for that.
I was never one to complain much before cuz I was happy to have someone to be outside with, but now that I'm finding other people to climb with and travel with I am beginning of thinking about just letting the opportunities to head out with her slide by.
That was just a little rant about one of the crazy people who have picked up and moved to Korea. There are many strange foreigners here, not excluding myself I'm sure. Plus this will serve as a reminder as to why I don't want to head out with this particular foreigner if I ever get lonely and want to get outside, I think I'd prefer to go myself. I'm actually passing up a chance this weekend for climbing because of this. Instead I'm going to head down to Jirisan and do some hiking alone. I haven't really done much travelling alone in Korea, so I think this will be a fun experience. I promise to upload pictures much sooner.
We met up with Sonia and Peter (who had only been in Korea for 1 month). Peter is a great guy and has a similar background to mine, so I look forward to travelling a bit more with him. They were late meeting us at the bus terminal in the closest town to the park, so Laura wasn't all too happy about me making her get up at 6 in the morning to catch a 7:20 bus, but we got to have a yummy breakfast of Pumpkin porridge while we waited. So we took a bus to the park and headed straight up to the climbing area, which was a bit of a hike and climb in itself. There were many Koreans out, and those guys were pulling on some hard stuff. We set up a couple routes and did some top roping, but nothing too serious. I ended up coming down with a bit of a migrain in the late afternoon partially caused I think by cigarette smoke (more on that in a bit). So I headed down and took a nap in the tent. Not soon after I laid down a heavy rain came out of nowwhere. I was relieved not to be out having to hike in the down poor, and I had a good rest. The group came back checked in on me and then most of them ended up drinking heavily under a tarp. I made some soup and went to sleep. The next morning it was still raining so a few of us went to the temple and had some tea in the tea house, which was some of the best I've ever had (Honey and Pine shoot tea). No use in staying out to go climbing when it was raining so I took off with Laura.
Rest of the photos
On the bus ride bike we had a nice conversation about my acquaintence Sonia. We were talking about how she is a vegetarian chain smoker who enjoys rock climbing. This chick really does smoke a lot. It was one after another while we were hiking. Also she is a bit of an agressive do right, anti corporation, I'm better than you kind of person. For example when Peter mentioned going to Costco to get some foreign foods she spent 10 minutes spouting off on how evil of a corporation it and other things like Walmart are so bad for the world, and he was all the while saying I hear what you're saying now drop it. Now I know I can be like this sometimes as well with specific things, but at least I don't drone on about it to no end. What else is interesting is she is always talking about not wanting to support international conglomerates, but she smokes 1-2 packs of Marlboro cigarettes a day... Hello Phillip Morris, international conglomerate that used to advertise to kids. Oh and everytime I have travelled with her I always come back with a cough that takes me over a week to shake off, so I blame the evil cigarette company for that.
I was never one to complain much before cuz I was happy to have someone to be outside with, but now that I'm finding other people to climb with and travel with I am beginning of thinking about just letting the opportunities to head out with her slide by.
That was just a little rant about one of the crazy people who have picked up and moved to Korea. There are many strange foreigners here, not excluding myself I'm sure. Plus this will serve as a reminder as to why I don't want to head out with this particular foreigner if I ever get lonely and want to get outside, I think I'd prefer to go myself. I'm actually passing up a chance this weekend for climbing because of this. Instead I'm going to head down to Jirisan and do some hiking alone. I haven't really done much travelling alone in Korea, so I think this will be a fun experience. I promise to upload pictures much sooner.