Yesterday was another gorgeous day and we decided to do some hiking up on Munsusan. There’s about a half dozen major paths up the mountain and numerous smaller ones. Yesterday we went up near a cascade of waterfalls and then took a path up the ridgeline. Rather than a series of switchbacks across the face, we went directly up the backbone of ridge. That was a hard climb.
When we reached the top, MyeongHee wanted to take another path down that she knew of. It, too, was a major path but three-way junction half-way up fooled us. We spent an hour or so following paths that either eventually went back up the mountain or paths that led to dead ends. We ended up following a creeek bed strewn with boulders and scree and we scrambled our way down.
By the time we made it down the mountain and into town again, it felt like we had done less of a hike than a death march. We stopped at the grocery store for some dinner makings and then hibernated the rest of the evening. A hot foot-bath and early bed time meant we were just setting ourselves up to be sore today. And we are. We stiffened up quick and it might take a day or two to loosen up again.
Despite the hard climb, I got some decent pictures of harvest time in Korea. It’s not the kind of heavily mechanized affair that America endures. Its rather a manual labor thing with only small motorized carts and splitters.
A man drives a load of rice past a small village of traditional farm houses. Field in the foreground have been cut by hand with a scythe. Some of the stalks of rice still lay on the ground drying while others parts of the field have been processed and grain recovered. In the background, another field still stands, the rice heavy with seads.
