The first hike

This day was absolutely amazing. Since I don't really know where to start, I'll start from the beginning: The alarm rings. It is 7:31h in the morning. I cannot believe I'm doing this to myself. A few minutes later, I force myself out of bed, shower, put on shorts, a polo shirt and shoes and hurry to the appointed meeting place. Steffi and Kalle, the only ones joining me on this trip for some reason, arrive a little later, equally exhausted from the last evening and less than five hours of sleep. We hurry to take a bus and multiple different metro lines to our desired destination: Dobongsan. Nonetheless, we are ten minutes late, but meet up with our German "tour guides", who are here on business for a year, without trouble. We then follow the enormous stream of Korean hikers away from the metro stop into an area full small food and hiking shops on the bottom of the mountain. We are advised to buy some gloves, so we do. I notice for the first time that Steffi, Kalle, Axel and Klaus-Jürgen are all wearing professional hiking shoes as well. Should I be worried? But then again how bad can less than one thousand meter high hills be? I am about to find out...
A few hundred meters later the shopping area ends and we pass a ranger station indicating
the beginning of the national park area. The hiking starts with moderate incline, well-made paths and lots of Koreans surrounding us. At the first intersection, we choose right and this means up. The incline increases substantially, the path is now made of some man-placed rocks and some very naturaly rock. It is about time to put on gloves to be able to use the stone bottom and sticking out roots as handholds. It's wonderful. This is the type of hiking I always enjoyed as a little kid. After about an hour we reach the first view point looking over right at a Buddhist temple complex on another hill across from us. Only last weekend I bought the hand-painted picture of such a landscape and decided to visit an area like this during my stay and there I am. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, even the path has gotten a little less crowed. Around the next turn we see an impressive rock formation and all of us are perfectly happy to be on this beautiful, if slightly more exhausting than expected, hike. My shoes don't give perfect hold on the stones, but it is more than sufficient. A little later we arrive at an area with steel ropes lining the sides of the path. The incline changes dramatically. Upwards. No way to go up without clinging tightly to the rope and aiding the steps by pulling oneself upwards with the arms. This is where I start to really regret my shoes. Not giving perfect hold, especially on slightly wet or smooth rock, I need to lean back more, hold the ropes a bit tighter and press against the rock harder. The thought of slipping scares me quite a bit. All of us make it past this part without severe problems, though. I scratch my knee on a rock - I suddenly seem to be the only person wearing shorts in this area - but it doesn't hurt and only bleeds very little. The path continues as before, but another, even more difficult part is about to come. Luckily, I gained confidence in my abilities and even a little in my shoes, so it has turned into more of a challenge than a danger. Steffi, Kalle and I acknowledge that our parents would probably be more scared than us, if they were to know what we are currently doing. Arriving at the top, sweat is running down our faces and our shirts are drenched. Evidently, this is a rare experience for Steffi and Kalle. We marvel at the fact that still uncounted numbers of Koreans of all ages are coming up the path we took. How 60+ year-olds can handle this climb is beyond us. We believe, that 50% of any German highschool class would probably have given up by now. We climb up a few more nearby hill tops to get a pretty view, but then start heading down. Using yet another steel-cable path along a little creek we eventually make it back to the shopping and eating area after a solid five hours. On the way we even run across another Buddhist temple and take a little detour to get a close look at it. We are dead tired and exhausted, but also extremely happy. We accompany Axel and Klaus-Jürgen to a restaurant they know and eat the first soup, that contains extraordinarily tasty fish - although the head swimming in the soup did make a scary impression at first. A good meal, a few beers with cider (Korean for Sprite) and a bottle of Soju later, we head home completely exhausted and happy. I will definitely do this again, but first I will buy appropriate shoes.