PyeongChang: A Winter Olympics Adventure

South Korea had one of its coldest winters on record this year, including a January day that was its coldest in 35 years (minus 18.6 degrees Celsius/minus 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit). It was also unusually snowy, providing us with lots of opportunities for winter hiking. Though we don’t ski, we decided we couldn’t miss visiting PyeongChang, Gangwon-do, the site of the 2018 Winter Olympics. Besides, what better place to spend a cold, winter weekend than in South Korea’s premier ski country?

Getting there and staying

Getting to and around PyeongChang was probably the easiest trip we’ve yet experienced in South Korea. The KTX train travels directly from Seoul Station to Jinbu Terminal, on the outskirts of the main ski area. We stayed at the Alpensia Ski Resort, which included a free shuttle to convey us from the train station to our hotel. We soon discovered that it is also super easy to get a taxi in this area, so we utilized our KakaoT app (similar to Uber) throughout the weekend. We were even able to get a taxi from Alpensia to Odaesan National Park, which is about a 40-minute drive.

The Intercontinental Hotel was extremely comfortable and felt very Western, from the various food options to the almost ubiquitous English-speaking staff. The food there was pricey, so we also enjoyed some Korean-style meals in other parts of the resort, which were much more affordable. From our room, we had a great view of Alpensia’s snowy slopes. We might not be willing to hurtle downhill ourselves, but it’s fun to watch others!

Olympic Sites at Alpensia

Alpensia hosted the large hill ski-jumping, cross-country skiing, and biathlon competitions in 2018, so we visited their Olympic complex. We did see one athlete using the ski-jumping facility just as we arrived, but unfortunately his practice seemed done for the day, so we didn’t get any photos. We also didn’t leave ourselves enough time to go up into the observatory above the ski jump, so we contented ourselves with utilizing the walking path around the large complex.

Olympic Sites at YongPyeong

To see the Olympic downhill slope, we visited nearby YongPyeong Resort and rode the Mt. Balwangsan Cable Car up to the top of that resort’s highest peak. At 7.4km, this cable car course is said to be the longest in Asia. It was amazing that it just kept going, and going, and going up, with tremendous views of the slopes below and the surrounding mountains of the PyeongChang region.

Little did we know, in addition to seeing the top of the Olympic downhill slope, there are hikes you can do from this mountaintop. We weren’t dressed appropriately for the very cold wind we encountered, but we did manage a short walk around the park at the peak before heading back to the slightly warmer cable car down. This is as close as we’re likely to get to Olympic downhill skiing!

Because we are much more adept at hiking than skiing, we also visited Odaesan National Park, an easy drive north of PyeongChang’s ski area. You can visit snowy Odaesan in our next post.

Head to our Flickr page for more photos of our Pyeongchang Winter Olympics adventure. Happy trails!