Distance: 20.7km (649.9km), time spent: 8:55 (321:01).
Altitude (start / end / highest): 800m / 1338m / 1338m.
Weather: Overcast, some fog, some sun.
Another national park approaches me today, Odaesan, the mountain of five platforms. Where the trail is running through the national park, there is mainly an open landscape to behold; so it is not surprising that I wake up to a landscape where it is the clouds that are dominating the sky. After a night in a proper bed, I just want to crawl back in under the duvet again and postpone the walk I have ahead of me today to tomorrow. When I crawled down into my sleeping bag later in the evening, I was seriously happy that I pushed myself out of the bed.
Daegwanryeong. The Cheon-Ji-In monument towering over the open parking lot, to the left the small wind turbine museum.
The fog does not lie so dense over Daegwanryeong now, as it did yesterday, but there is not much blue sky to talk of. The layer of clouds lies grey and threatening above me. Before I continue on, I spend some time looking around at the place; the absence of thick fog turns the area into a completely different place. How massive the Cheon-Ji-In monument really is becomes apparent when I can see it towering above the parking lot that I yesterday walked across as a lost person on desolate plains.
The Daegwanryeong Shrines, one of Korea's most famous blends of animistic faith and Confucian history. The seonghwangsa in the front, the sanshingak with the two women performing a ceremony in the background.
The clouds are nevertheless dominating the view when the pass has become history and the trail is what forms my sole world again. There is often an own silence occurring when it is fog outside, it is as if a deadening blanket is lowering itself over the nature, while sounds that are not created by the nature gets an amplifying effect. From the deep drums can be heard. I follow a path down to where the hollow sounds originates from, the Daegwanryeong Shrines, where two women are performing a spiritual ritual outside the sanshingak at the place, while a groundskeeper unaffected sweeps the ground. There is also a seonghwangsa here, a tutelary spirit shrine, as well as several stone altars. The area is a peaceful place in an autumn clad forest. In such surroundings, you will stress down and feel a calmness descend upon you. I can hear sounds of water trickling from a water source, I refill my water supply and while the drums continues unabated, I venture up again towards the spiritual backbone above.
A wind turbine emerges out of the clouds above where the trail resembled like a walk in a desolate moor landscape.
Earlier on the trail, I might have been a little unhappy had I walked over this bewitching landscape then, where the clouds are floating over the ridge opening and closing it again. Now my mood is different, I am still tired, but you can say that I have restored my mental balance. I can barely see the landscape unfold itself beneath the clouds, and the sight makes me feel that I am moving on a desolate moor. Rolling colourful meadows and hills. In between there are small openings appearing and I see huge mastodons passing by, while the rotors are cutting its way through the air.
Meeting at Najeumogi. A group of young campers invited me over for tea, fruit and chocolate.
A temporary withdrawal causes me to become better known with the area around, below the ridge, I can see some rooftops from farms and there are many 4WD tracks frolicking in the landscape. After Seonjaryeong (1157m), where a large stele marks when Baekdudaegan become designated a protected area, I meet a young group that has camped nearby Najeumogi. They cheer at me and invites me over, and it does not take long time before I become part of a lively conversation. As solitary foreigner, you do not get to walk a lot in peace here, but as a solitary foreigner, I am also quite happy about it. When I keep walking, the withdrawal has passed, and the clouds has regained their positions.
A couple of years ago, I saw a Korean movie called Taegukgi Hwinalrimyeo (Brotherhood Of War), about two brothers being forced to fight during the Korean War, now I stand looking at a sign telling that the area I am in was used as a location for the movie. Amusing, I am however walking through the hazy landscape in a far merrier period than the movie depicts. A somewhat curious gate stands as an entrance to where the trail continues on an enjoyable path, flanked by new ropes and fences.
A sign telling that the area around was used as a location during the filming of Taegukgi Hwinalrimyeo, a Korean drama from the Korean War. A good movie by the way.
The fenced in path leads me to an area that must be a popular destination, many buses are coming and going and it is crowded around me now. If it is because of the movie location that there are so many people here, I do not know. However, it is probably not the small, weird and dilapidated shelter here, which looks like a camping wagon without wheels. I am the only one continuing further on the path enclosed in the light haze.
I eat lunch at Maebong (1173m), sitting on the ground at the summit that marks the beginning of Odaesan National Park. From here to Noinbong, the trail is yet again closed, so it tickles a little bit in the stomach when I lawlessly sneak further through a short stretch hidden in the woods. The desolate scenery returns when I emerges out of the woods, open grounds, with some trees standing solitary in the haze. I see no danger until I discover a surveillance camera further down, so into the bush I go. And that causes a toil without equal, everything that is of bushes and trees are jerking and tearing at me, something that I am probably deserving. I paws my way out later below the camera, but if it is really in use, I do not know.
A walk through a forbidden landscape in Odaesan National Park.
Odaesan is offering a delicate beauty. The scenery is incredibly beautiful, more of the rolling meadows and lonesome trees, a fairy tale landscape. A bewitched hiker.
There are often many reasons behind choosing to taking on a hike, one of the reasons that I wanted to do this walk was quite simple a small picture in a guidebook. The picture depicted only a solitary tree near the summit of Sohwangbyeongsan, where the ground was covered by a small layer of snow, there was something enticingly melancholic over that picture. I had a great wish to experience and see the same scenery as on the picture, even though I knew that it would be impossible for me to experience it with snow.
At the summit of Sohwangbyeongsan, blue sky surrounded by clouds in a wide circle around the bald summit.
I never found the small melancholic tree, but that mattered little when I arrived at the summit of Sohwangbyeongsan (1327m). For when I walks out of the forest, I step out onto a green summit where it is blue sky in a wide circle around me, outside the circle the clouds are hanging. The summit itself lies just beyond where the trail goes, it is a round and grassy summit, where you can see over to Hwangbyeongsan with its domes and antennas. Sitting on a rock, bathing in the sunlight my mood is now at a high.
Clouds rolling over Noinbong.
I am now getting closer to Noinbong, where the closed section enters the open trail again, after a small guest appearance down in the forest with thin ghosts whispering between the trees. Clouds rolling over the summit of Noinbong. I sneak past another camera above Noinbong Shelter; do not want to become spotted by the people working there. Up at the summit of Noinbong (1338m), the view is not so good, but it is definitely a cool summit. I just have to climb on top of the stele, while the treetops peeks up from the clouds. Then I go down to the endpoint of today, Noinbong Shelter.
At the summit of Noinbong, and just as well on the top of the stele.
The shelter is listed as a first come, first serve deal, but turned out to be something completely different than what I thought it was. It turns out that it is not a staffed cabin, as the usual shelters of Korea National Park Service are. Instead, it is a little worn building that reminds me mostly of a cabane from the Pyrenees, inside there are two plank beds that you can sleep on. Outside two other hikers has pitched their tents. Water is it scarce of, I do find some water running from a creek, but it is garbage lying in it.
The evening nevertheless turns out to become quite pleasant at the place. I eat dinner outside together with the two other hikers, who thinks that I should spice up my usual noodle dish with some kimchi. We then later on sit inside the cabin, when it has become chilly outside, and toasts in soju. I wanted at first to offer them some of my soju, but were told that you should not drink soju alone (honja), so they went out and brought some more. The only thing I miss is a fireplace where I can build a small fire, which would have made the perfect ending of a great day.
Inside Cabane de Noinbong, which resembled a lot the open cabins you find in the Pyrenees.
Outside I can see the lights from Hwangbyeongsan, the two other hikers goes to sleep in their tents, and I crawl into my sleeping bag on the lower plank bed inside the cabin. Later someone is passing by the cabin in the darkness; I can see lights from headlamps outside. Then sleep comes crawling quietly, where I lay inside the Cabane de Noinbong.
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