Chuseok Plans

Chuseok is the Korean Thanksgiving. It's in early October, generally. I guess the date changes as it is based on the lunar calendar. Either way, for foreigners in Korea, this means a long weekend to do whatever we want while Koreans are off with their families doing traditional family ceremony stuff. Last year I went to Seoraksan, generally considered to be Korea's most beautiful national park. It was a great weekend of a bit of hiking and climbing, with great weather, and not too many people.

This year I have a five day weekend and I intend to ride my motorcycle to Jirisan, generally regarded as Korea's second most beautiful national park, hike the 45 kilometer ridge line with some friends, and then ride my bike back to Daegu. The descriptions of the hike can be found here (hike number four). We intend to go west to east, from Hwaeomsa to Daewonsa in three days. Dan booked shelters for the four of us. I know I said that usually Koreans are busy doing family stuff on Chuseok, but it seems we won't be the only ones doing this hike, as all the shelters filled up within minutes of the reservations being open. This is pretty standard according to Dan, who's been there before.



Our plan is to start hiking early Friday morning. My plan is to leave Daegu on Thursday morning, ride my bike to the east entrance where we finish our trip, and then somehow get to the west entrance that evening and meet up with the other hikers, allowing me to hopefully just ride away when the hike is finished on Sunday. How I will get from one side of the park to the other, I'm not so sure. If I were to use public transportation, I would have to go way out of my way, so I may end up resorting to hitchhiking. We'll see. And that is also assuming my bike makes it there too. I went on a 70 kilometer ride today, and that is the longest I've been on it at one stretch before, and the trip to Jirisan will probably be at least three times that length. Plus traffic. Chuseok weekend is renowned for traffic. I hope that won't be a huge issue for me as I plan on taking the smaller roads to the mountain - motorcycles are banned on highways.

I bought hiking boots today, which I am currently breaking in. Merrell Switchbacks, size 9.5, half off of 220K. I thought the size would be too small, but my feet seem to fit into them alright, and I'm attributing the tingling in my feet to the fact that they're new boots and I have them tightly laced. This better just be part of the normal break-in process...