two mountains | one evening

after sleeping from 10pm till 7am i woke up for a morning jog along the han... then my sunday was pretty much spent in and out of my apartment, walking around some streets nearby, i'm enjoying going into small clothing shops and just 'thinking' of what i want to buy... it strange, but i'm still stuck in this mentality of buying from thrift shops... so if i actually think of something i want, i don't what i'm quite sure of yet. 

also i was thinking of what i wanted to do for the evening. 

i remembered my co-worker megan talking about hiking achasan (산 - san, means mountain, that's why you don't say achasan mountain)... and she said she heard it was pretty fun. which it was, but it didn't have the clearest location directions, so i knew that there was a temple near the bottom most entrance, so i actually used the temple street lanterns (all set up for buddah's birthday weekend) to guide me for the most part and asked an agima when the lamps went in both directions at an intersection... 

come to find out there are so many ways up these mountains because so many people climb, that for the most part it doesn't even matter, so if you feel like scrabbling your way up somewhere that no one else has gone before... climb on!!

so i hiked two mountain peaks, i went from achasan to yongmasan, the guide said it would be maybe a two hour hike, but again, so many paths that you can hike it so many different ways that i made the two peaks in about 2 hours. with only about a half hour on accent and decent (the hiking mountains in the main parts of the city are not "mountains" per-say" but they do offer great views of the city and excellent free outdoor fun in the forest).

the view from the south-eastern side of the hike

some of the paths you stumble upon are so easy 

you can do a bit of quick trail running...

i tried getting a decent picture down the north-west-ish side of yongmasan

but couldn't manage with the city smog.

this is a map of the connecting peaks in korea, yongmasan has a green mountain next to it, and achasan is so tiny they don't give it one, but it's very close to the subway stop (red dot - achasan) on the map.

overall a very nice hike, i hit a pretty good combination of easy-intermediate trails.. a few spots i could run lightly.. and the weather was really, really mild. 

it also just so happened that my friend sam, lives just a few short subway stops away from the one you can find at the bottom of yongmasan, so i visited him for dinner in his very awesome 13th floor apartment in nowon! Dolsot bibimbap and kimbap for the win... yummy yummy!