Distance: 21.5km (326.1km), time spent: 11:21 (169:07).
Altitude (start / end / highest): 297m / 525m / 1063m.
Weather: Nice at the beginning, more clouds later on.
I have a long day ahead of me, so I do not listen to the signals my body sends me and rise up early. Breakfast is cooked in the darkness outside the container, but is consumed inside in the heat. I have begun to spend a lot longer time during the morning hours, that I am tired is probably a good indication of why. Despite that I got up in good time, I get started a lot later than I wanted to.
Morning in Eunti, on the way up to the Baekdudaegan again, above me I can see the ridge that I will be walking.
As earlier mentioned, the backside of going down from the ridge is that you have to walk or climb back up again. On the way up I make a not so wise choice, my original good idea was to follow a path I believed to be going in a more direct direction up towards Euntigogae than I went down. Instead, the path turns out to be going in a direction I do not know where will end. So I decide to break off from it and walk in the direction of the path I went down on, through the vegetation. Not a good choice, that either. As the pressure cookers in my head is going off in irritation, and I can almost feel the steam from them coming out of my ears, I have to bash down again through scrub and bush. I end up down by the apple orchard where I so blatantly set off the alarm yesterday. From here, I at least know the way back up again. I never learn. I feel that all the rest I got yesterday is running out into the sand.
View towards Huiyangsan and the Bongamyonggol valley, the Bongamsa-temple can be seen to the lower right in the picture.
After spending too much time and effort to get back into the safe embrace of the Baekdudaegan, I hit a good stride up to the nine kings peak, Guwangbong (879m). From several spots, I can look down at Eunti, lying peaceful in the valley below. The trail goes steeply down after the summit, but the climb is rewarding you with great sights of the verdant valley of Bongamyonggol where you can see the Bongamsa-temple lying under the sacred eyes of the Huiyangsan-mountain. The mountain is breaking out of the wonderful green monotony with smooth grey mountainsides.
Jireumtijae, several signs, fences and ropes at this pass in the woods. Above there is a guardhouse of some kind.
At Jireumtijae, I pass a small guardhouse of some kind, just above another cabin of an unknown function. The pass are almost fenced in at all sides and from there the trail yet again kicks off with a climb upwards. I scare off a wild boar that runs snorting away through the trees. The path to the summit of Huiyangsan carries off from Baekdudaegan by a junction you get to after some steep climbs with the aid of ropes. The mountain is sacred for the monks at Bongamsa and at given times there is forbidden for hikers to visit the top. No such hindrance today, I let go of my backpack and set off towards the summit 400 metres away.
At the top of Huiyangsan, a look back towards where I came from.
Not a long walk in other words, but in return it is incredibly cool, you walk over and next to some formidable round cliffs. The summit lies at 998m, and is offering fluttering ribbons, several doltaps (cairns) and a view over the landscape below. I may wonder if one of the monks at Bongamsa is standing and watching up at me from the temple.
The top of Huiyangsan consists of several large and smooth cliffs and boulder that the path to the summit passes over.
Old history emerges from the undergrowth when the trail passes by the walls of an ancient fortress, which is probably built by the Silla kingdom in the 6th centuries Three Kingdoms Period, as a defence towards the Goguryeo kingdom in the north. It is as bygone ghosts of old are watching me from the depths of time, and I takes a wrong turn. It is first when I have come a long way down that I find out that something is wrong, and have to take the hard walk back up again. I sense the pressure cooker going off again. At the correct trail there is one single ribbon hanging, in opposition to the fireworks that decorated the trail I took.
Ancient fortress walls from the 6th century, over 1400 years old. Here I am standing beneath the wall on the wrong path going down.
It almost goes off again at Baeneomi Pyeongjeon, a junction where I cannot find the correct way from at once. So I just as well choose to sit down and have lunch. One trail goes down towards Eunti again, another goes in a northeasterly direction. Most of the ribbons is beckoning at the trail that leads to the summit of Sirobong, which does not correspond with the map or the guidebook. The correct direction from the junction is southeast, which there are no trail going to. It turns out that I firstly have to go on the trail that leads northeast, after which there is a path leading off it that is the Baekdudaegan.
View towards the ridge that continues further in a loop before it arrives at Ihwaryeong.
From here, the trail goes in a long loop towards southeast, before it twists towards northwest. I have spent a lot of time and effort on all the wrong choices today, and being a little bit irritated, I speed up my pace. Fortunately, it is a good path to walk on, though there are some scrambling both with and without ropes required. I pass several peaks, Imanbong, Gomteulbong, Baekhwasan, Hwangaksan, Jobong, while clouds come rolling in over the sky. I arrive at Ihwaryeong and the hyugeso there just before it closes.
A path through the woods.
Something that I am delighted about. I get to order some food, a good rice and curry dish with chicken again, with refill while eating. After having bought some goodies for later before they close (beer, potato chips, sweets), I understand on their body language that it is going to rain tomorrow. I really want to sit down there and relax some more, it was a nice place, but they directs me to a jeongja that lies on the other side of the pass. It is fortunately quite large and also very well ornamented. There will be no problem sleeping in it and keeping dry during the night.
Ihwaryeong Huygeso. I arrive at the place just before it closes; it was almost no people there at that time.
Darkness falls, and with the evening, the rain also comes. From the valley below, I can see the lights from the expressway that goes in a tunnel beneath the pass. The sound from the road is indescribable from up here, it sounds like the sounds of ufo's or spaceships from science-fiction movies. Two bikers from Busan arrives in the rain, tired. They set up a tent inside the jeongja, and invites me to a have spot inside it as well. Nice, even though I really would have preferred to sleep outside in the fresh air. I am excited of what tomorrow brings of weather. Below it is still humming from the spaceships.
View down towards the valley in the evening from the jeongja at the pass of Ihwaryeong. The lights from the cars are forming a glowing line in the dark. The sounds from the cars makes you feel that you are in a sci-fi movie.
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