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 going to Sangwonsa without stopping.

Sangwonsa was first built during the Silla Dynasty. It’s so old that it originally was rebuilt in 705. As with many structures in South Korea, though, the exisiting buildings are much newer. The temple burned down in 1946 and was rebuilt again in 1947. However, its bronze bell is the oldest in South Korea

The first two kilometers of this trail were sometimes steep but well-shoveled, and often we walked along an easy, paved path. The path that connects the three temples is a contemplative walk, with Buddhist chants often playing quietly through speakers hidden in attractive stone lanterns.

The second temple along the way, Sajaam, looked magical shrouded in mist with the snowy mountains below it. We had to drag ourselves away from this one in order to continue the hike!

About halfway to the peak we reached Beopheungsa (also known as Jeongmyeolbogung), a thousand-year-old temple surrounded by trees and snow. It was very quiet as some hikers, including a Buddhist monk, meditatively circled the small building. This once was a large temple complex, but now only a few small buildings remain.

After we left Beophungsa, it felt like the hike really began. The next 1.5 kilometers were somewhat less meditative, as we climbed much steeper, snow-covered slopes. We were grateful for crampons and hiking poles and wouldn’t recommend hiking this trail in winter without them. We witnessed lots of slipping and sliding among hikers who didn’t have good snow gear.

Because we felt prepared, we could focus on the trail without worrying too much. It was beautiful to be in the snowy woods, and the higher we climbed, the more snow we saw. We also started climbing into cloudcover, which made the whole trail appear very mysterious.

When we reached Birobong Peak, we were so far into the clouds that we couldn’t see a thing! Since there was no payoff with a view, it’s a good thing the trail itself was so much fun we didn’t mind. We had planned to hike along the ridge to take a different trail back to the bottom, but it was so snowy and cloudy we didn’t risk it. It was also very cold and windy at the top, and we didn’t linger. You can tell the chemist was not thrilled with the weather! Behind him in the photo below, you can see some intrepid Korean hikers dining in their improvised tent bubble. Not so for us! Some quick trail mix and water, and we were heading back down the slippery slopes.

Admittedly, we managed to have quite a bit of fun during our descent! It seemed even prettier on the way down because since we knew exactly what we were dealing with, we could stop and look around more. Can you spot the paparazzi up a tree?

When we had retraced our steps all the way back to Sangwonsa, we were blessed with double surprises. Not only had the sun come out, but we discovered that Sangwonsa hosts a cozy tea and coffee shop with a beautiful view of the temple grounds. Hooray!

We were just in time to catch a local bus from the Sangwonsa trailhead back to Jinbu Station, saving ourselves some cab fare. It can be really difficult to find Korean trail maps on English-language websites, so here are a couple of maps you may find helpful in case you ever find yourself traveling to Odaesan. We completed the Sangwonsa Course to Birobong Peak but unfortunately didn’t get to explore the rest of the trail along the ridge.