Climbing Dobongsan

This post is a little bit late, but two weekends ago we had quite the climbing experience. We decided to be a little adventurous that Saturday and go on a five hour hike of Dobong Mountain. This is a picture of it, it's pretty high. There are many different trails, some easier than others, but being "typically us" we did not take a map and so ended up on the 'wrong' trail. It wasn't really wrong... we weren't lost... however, we did end up on the mountain climbing trail, instead of easier hiking. We had no climbing gear... gloves, appropriate shoes, rope, etc.. and so it was quite difficult. At one point, we were climbing rock and it was a pretty narrow passage... the foot holds were also pretty far apart, Scott went up ahead of me, and I made it part way up. Unfortunately for me, half way up I realised that I couldn't reach the next foot hold with my short legs and I could not get back down, as I couldn't see the previous ones behind me. In short, I was quite stuck. Neither one of us knew what to do... so I stood, holding myself up for a few minutes, feeling somewhat panicky. Luckily, some experienced Korean hikers came along and saw us and hoisted me up from below... it was humiliating and definitely humbling, but it had to be done. They probably had quite a laugh about it later. Well, the hike was long and difficult, our legs got tired and our hands got scratched up, but the beautiful views were well worth it. If you look at the peaks in the picture, we actually made it to the top of one of those peaks and it was amazing.