Sokcho Diary

The Cave Hike

13.9.06


One of the many hiking trails in Sorak-san Park is a hike up to a Buddhist shrine deep in the mountains. One of the first big hikes that I did with my friend Wojtek when I got here was to head up to the cave as he had never been there and I really wanted to see it.

When you take the bus to Sorak-san you go along a river valley lined with some very traditional villages that sit on the banks of a boulder strewn river that looks tame now but you can tell has seen some terrific floods in its day by the size of the rocks that litter the river bed. There just had to be some tremendous forces of water rushing down from the mountains to carry these massive stones into where we see them now.

When you get almost to the gate to the park the bus goes over this bridge and through the town of Sorak. This is a nothing but a rest stop, a tourist town. There are a few min-baks (homes that rent rooms), yeogwan (small hotels), and two five star palaces, the Star Hotel and the Kensington arms that are very high dollar. Along with a few homes and stores this is all that exist in the town of Sorak proper.

While touristy, Sorak does have on redeeming quality. It is incredibly beautiful. It sits on the slopes of the river valley and the town extends a little bit up the sides of the mountains. Everything is a brilliant green and the peaks rise up the valley with tops of craggy limestone. Have you ever seen a painting from Asia with the mist rising over a verdant green slope crowned with pinnacles of bare rock? That is what this town, and the park of Sorak-san looks like.

We hiked through the gate, paying our whopping 3400-won entrance fee, about four dollars and stopped by the five-story statue of Buddha. Even though I am a baptized Catholic, when I am in Asia, I do as the locals do. As this area, and everything in it, is essentially a Buddhist retreat, I have always felt that it is only appropriate that I stop by the statue and pay my respects, asking for a safe hike from the gods.

From the statue it was a pretty easy hike up to the start of the mountainside where the cave is located. We stopped at a couple of rest areas on the way to have jon, Korean pancakes, stuffed with mountain vegetables and squid and had a couple bottles of soju. I know, it was early in the morning but it really goes great with food and well, it tastes good.

When we got to the last area before the cave there was a little signposts with distances to various points along the trail. The one we wanted pointed to the right, across the river, and said, “Cave, .6 kilometers”. Easy we thought, that is only 600 meters about six football fields, hell we could walk that in about fifteen minutes we said and started off. It took about ten minutes before we realized that it was going to take us a tad bit longer than fifteen minutes because the “mere” 600 meters happened to be straight up, an exciting vertical climb.

First we scrambled up the obligatory rock fall, the trail marked occasionally by a small rope as our only guide, what fun!

After about a half hour scramble we came to a very narrow ledge where the trail forked, the left went over a pass to a temple deep into the mountains, about fifteen miles away and looked like sheer and utter hell. You know the ten thousand yard stare that combat veterans have? That is the look on the faces of about five Koreans stumbling towards us. They looked like they had come from the seventh pit of hell and had absolutely no desire to head back. Luckily the cave was to the left, up 963 steep metal stairs, oh boy!

As we looked up at said stairs I turned to Wojtek and uttered the only words I said from there to the cave and said, “I hate fucking stairs”, took the lead, and started heading up.

The hike was awesome. We kept heading up and up and were constantly rewarded with views of the mountains and the peaks with layer after layer of mist rising up. It looked like those old landscape paintings of China from Szechwan Province.

After about forty-five minutes we reached the cloud line and could not see anything for a little while. Wojtek had taken the lead and it was getting tough to see his white t-shirt about five meters above me.
We finally broke through the cloud line at about 850 meters, right at the entrance to the cave. It was a little disappointing until I realized that is peace and beauty were not to be found in a gaudy, church like place but in the simplicity of a small gold Buddha statue with a few prayer lanterns and some burning joss sticks.