JIRI-SAN

My former student and good friend Mingu recently invited me to climb Jiri-san, peninsular Korea's highest mountain, with him and his coworkers. Mingu is a new intern at a large Korean company and this was to be an employee team building trip, so I felt flattered to have the opportunity to attend.
However, hiking Jiri-san in a day is no easy feat. It takes about five hours to get there by bus and our scheduled 'challenging' (AKA 'bloody hard') route was to take about nine hours and not even include reaching the summit. So I was a little anxious about my hiking abilities compared to the others going, and about the overnight bus.
The private bus that was hired for our group of twenty-one Koreans and one Irish departed from their office building where we had congregated. The journey itself was awful as the driver was a psycho; accelerate, brake, accelerate, brake, swerve, and repeat again. Actually maybe it wasn't that horrible since no one else seemed to mind. I was probably just grumpy becuase I can rarely sleep on buses and apprehensive about the doing the big hike exhausted. We arrived at the base of the mountain about five thirty and had breakfast in a traditional restaurant there. I'm sorry Korea, but it was horrible. Something I've never experienced before, a big terrible-smelling bowl of soup which contained fermented soybean (I believe) and turned my stomanch. There was no escaping the smell as the steam from twenty-two bowls wafted in my direction in the cool early morning air. And of course, being the only foreigner and guest, I felt obliged to be polite and try it eat as much as possible. After a few token mouthfuls and nearly gagging, I gave up. I tried to get as much rice and pickled vegatables into me as possible for energy, but that was hard with the smell. I would have to depend on my stash of peanuts and m and m's to for fuel.My grumpy start to the day however, took a 180 when the managers who were organizing everything started handing out tuna-filled rice balls. Upon receiving mine one of the managers smiled and asked 'room for beer'? I gladly accepted a cold can of Korean beer wrapped newspaper as did everyone else. And as we were lacing up our boots one of the kind interns, noting my suffering, brought me a hot, sweet cup of coffee. Realizing I was with a bunch of fun and generous people, my mood lifted with the rising sun and I prepared myself for a tough, but fun day ahead.
The initial stretch was really tough. In the first two hours we ascended about 900 metres over very rough, mostly unpathed terrain. Everyone seemed to find it tough which made me feel better, and they were a good group of people, likable and funny, cheering each other on and joking around. And of course it wasn't long until I'd found the weakest member in the group to tease and make myself look better.At eight o'clock we passed a man lying on a rock snoring. The interns told me he was probably already drunk. Haha. We stopped thirty minutes later for another breakfast and beer. And at nine we recommenced hiking. After five minutes I felt very weak and realized the beer was a terrible idea. By 09:30 my legs were telling me they couldn't take any more. I soon after realized that everyone was in the same position. Well, at least us young ones, the older guys seemed to be having no problems and were sipping from whisky flasks as they went. We took another break at about ten thirty and I kindly declined the offers of a shot of whisky. No thanks!By the time we finally stopped for lunch of hot noodles and more beer, I was feeling pretty weary and beat. But the forty minute break must've helped because when we started hiking again I was finally 'in the zone'. It was mostly downhill in the afternoon, again the 'path' was mostly huge, randomly situated rocks which we had to ramble over, battering our poor joints and threatening twisted ankles and knees. But nonetheless it was fun and the high sun was penetrating into the deep forest as we passed many rivers and small waterfalls.We stopped at one of the small waterfalls to wet our hair, and then later at an icy river to soak our feet (and watch one of the crazy managers jump in). This was really refreshing and afterwards I felt like I could hike all day.At two o'clock I got a second wind and broke ahead of the crowd to listen to some Christy Moore on my MP3 and appreciate nature. And as three o'clock hit our hike was over. We had completed the sixteen kilometre course. So in typical Korean style, it was time to get drunk.
Following some locally made tofu sidedishes we drunk a bellyfull of makoli, a Korean rice alcohol infamous for it's hangover and usually poured from a big cheap kettle or pot into little cheap plastic bowls. I'd drunk makoli before but was disgusted and opted to leave it for Korea's students and homeless people. But it was actually very delicious and enjoyable after such a grueling hike and now I see why Koreans love it so much.Of course being the only foreigner, I was treated like a guest of honor and sat at the management table and not with the interns. But of course this meant accepting all the toasts by the managers and acting as strong-drinking-ambassador for Ireland.
By the time we got on the bus I was pretty tipsy. And that's when the real drinking started. God, by the time we had our first toilet stop I could hardly walk, ha! What a day.
So in conclusion, it wasn't a very beautiful hike, we didn't summit, it was tiring before we even started and the route we took wasn't overly enjoyable. But I do understand the Korean company mentality of doing something difficult together to bond as a team. And I do appreciate the invitation I hospitality I received. And I did feel a sense of accomplishment for not dying en route. And I enjoyed pushing myself under those conditions. But, I will never do it again :)