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Korea Winter Trekking in a Nutshell: Outside Seoul
“Oh, South Korea should be beautiful this time of year, with all that snow.” “Well, must be wonderful in South Korea this time of the year. All that underwear!” So sums up our frigid, snowy South Korean winter, though I might have paraphrased a bit… (Extra props to those who can identify this set of wintry quotable quotes!) We hiked so much over the winter that we’re not trying to post separately about each hike. Instead, this post will be a “photo album” representative of our favorite chilly treks outside of Seoul, with brief information about where to find each trail for those who may find themselves hiking in future…
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Walking Through the Woods on a Snowy Morning: Odaesan National Park
PyeongChang may be winter sports country, but it’s also remarkable hiking country. After our trial run the previous day in the cold and snow of PyeongChang’s skiing mountaintops, we were prepared for our wintry hike of Odaesan’s Birobong Peak. This 7km course offers an elevation gain of about 1,100 meters. We easily found a taxi to drive us to the trailhead at Sangwonsa, the first of three temples along this route. In order to reach the trailhead, we drove past Woljeongsa Temple, famous for its fir tree forest, which looked worth a visit if you have time. We were anxious about transportation and timing, so for this visit we kept…
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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…
