In the fall of 2020, my fun little hobby of hiking transitioned to a full blown obsession.
Like many people, my athletic goals came to screeching halt in the spring of 2020 with the advent of corona restrictions. My year long preparation to run my first full marathon ended as races were cancelled nationwide and the outdoor mask mandate took the rest of my motivation to run.
The middle of the woods became the only socially acceptable place to exercise even momentarily without a mask, and so I took to hiking like a fish to water.
Hiking 100 Mountains
Last year, I wrote about the Black Yak 100 Mountain challenge, hosted by the Black Yak Alpine Club (BAC). At the time, I had managed 25 of the 100 mountains in the challenge and I was eager to get as many foreigners involved in the challenge as possible.
When I wrote that post, I only had rough facts to offer readers. But now on the cusp of the end of this journey, I wanted to share my experiences, the positive and negative aspects of the challenge and some advice.
If you want to support my blog or get yourself some cool Korean national park swag, please consider checking out my Etsy shop! I make Korean camping and hiking souvenirs!
Hiking the first 96
I started the challenge casually in late October of 2020, and managed to complete 25 mountains by mid-May 2021. I was having fun, hiking roughly 4 times a month. Then after a four month stay in the States, I returned to Korea with a renewed drive. In the following 7 months, I completed another 71 mountains for credit and an additional dozen for other challenges. I was hiking Saturday and Sunday every weekend; like a crazy lady.
As of June, I’ve completed 96 of the 100 mountains.
With only 4 mountains left to hike, two in Busan and two in Seoul, I could easily be done by the beginning of July. But I just found out my mom is coming to Korea in August. So i’ve decided to put the challenge on pause so I can hike my final mountain with my mom 🙂
A Review
Overall it has been an exceptionally rewarding experience. This process has allowed me to get out of the corona blues and has reignited my passion for the outdoors. I would recommend anyone with a interest in hiking to download the app and join the challenge. It’s free!
But, I would not recommend undertaking the challenge with the intention of completing it, unless you want to stay in Korea for 3+ years.
Completing the challenge in the amount of time I have (two years start to finish, or 1.5 years of active effort in Korea), will demand the dedication of all of your free time.
The first half of my challenge time, (Oct 20’-May 21’: Mountains 1-25) was a free casual sort of fun. Hiking every other weekend and then more intensely during holidays or school breaks. With dozens to choose from, it was easy to pick a mountain that both my friends and I wanted to go to.
But the second half (Sept 21’-June 22’: Mountains 26-96), became a methodical exercise that required a lot of planning. For as you progress though the challenge, the mountains to choose from diminish. An obvious statement, but it has big effects on the approach you must adopt toward the challenge. The mentality of plenty is eliminated and you have to go to specific mountains, making progress where you rely on hiking groups or bus tours more difficult (for the chances they will go to the specific mountains you need declines as you need a more limiting and specific set of mountains). The lack of popularity of certain mountains on the list, as well as fire restriction that last for months become increasingly more influential on ones schedule.
It also means you have to travel farther as you complete all the mountains close to you first. This makes the required travel time and travel expense likewise an increasing burden over time.
As a result, Seoul residents often end up doing the Jeollanam-do mountains last. And as I am a Jeollanam-do resident, of my last 10 mountains 5 of them were close to Seoul.
The Drawbacks
If you just want to hike for fun and use the challenge to help you pick mountains, these negative aspects don’t really apply. These are specific to going the full mile and completing the challenge.
It’s easy to assume its just a hiking challenge, but I found it to be a logistical nightmare disguised as a sporting event. With half the difficultly coming from the hiking itself and the other half dealing with the logistics of traveling to every part of Korea. Including everyone’s favorite island (Jeju)
1. The Expense
Hiking your local mountain doesn’t have to be an expensive hobby, but the challenge is stupid expensive to actually pull off.
Transportation costs, occasional housing, multiple season hiking clothes, seasonal accessories like snow shoes spikes, new shoes when they break, and food as a minimum. Don’t forget Jeju’s Hallason is also on the list, so there’s flights/boat fees to contend with.
Then, it’s easy to overspend. Such as different bags for different types of hiking, different styles of clothing and little swag items like the 100 mountain patches.
The challenge also incentives spending by offering ‘points’ that work toward discounts at Black Yak that expire if not used.
2. A Car / Hiking Clubs
If you don’t have a car, there is no completing this whole challenge relying on public transportation. A car or an active hiking club with similar goals is 100% necessary.
I personally do not have a car. Of my 96 completed mountains, I did roughly 20 by public transport and the remaining 75 through my friends with cars, my Jeollanam-do regional hiking club and Seoul based bus tours. Of those 70, maybe 30 I could have done by public transport. But it would have doubled my stress.
3. The Quota Mountains
The challenge isn’t the best 100 mountains in Korea. Rather, I would say it’s the regional representative mountains of Korea. The mountains are chosen so that there are roughly 20 in each province.
Which means there are about 15 total I felt were a chore to do. With them either being super boring, seemingly randomly picked, or unexpectedly short (which might not seem like a bad thing but frustrating when its 2 hours of driving each way). This means you will likely find yourself doing two in one day, just to get them out of the way.
But that’s does leave 85 decent or better ones.
It’s a double edge sword, if it was the ’best mountains of korea’ one’s location would determine their ability to complete the challenge. Instead, its roughly the same degree of nightmare to complete, transportation wise, for everyone.
The Good
1. Bragging Rights/ Community
According to the Black Yak Alpine Club website, more than 147,000 people have gotten credit for one or more mountains from the 100 Mountain Challenge. By joining the challenge you are joining a large community of hikers passionate about the outdoors.
Furthermore, as you progress through challenge and you make it public, people give you ‘kudos’. This ranges from random people of the mountain telling me ‘good, good’ when they see my hiking patch. Or others giving me encouragement online as I post my latest updates.
Its a great starting point for conversation when people see the patch or when I take a picture at the peak with the official challenge flag.
My status in the challenge also acts as my resume of sorts when it comes to showing my hiking experience, and has facilitated me being accepted into invite only hiking groups and my place on a sponsored trail running team. It has also cut down on the unsolicited advice from random old men on the mountain.
Additionally, once you get the 100, it opens up another world of sorts with different opportunities. Such becoming a Black Yak Sherpa.
2. Sense of Purpose
While this might seem a little cheesy, this challenge has been emotionally and spiritually very rewarding. It took my fun hobby and gave me a sense of purpose behind it. While hiking is fun and good for your health, when faced with a million adult things i could be doing, it could be seen as a waste of time. Instead, the challenge gave me a purpose with goals outside of work/school life.
Additionally, I have taken a lot of satisfaction from the challenge, as it gave me a goal that is large but allowed me to make steady progress. The patches at each increase of ten, also served to make the challenge seem more possible with a great sense of accomplishment each time i could rip off my old one and sew on the next one. So often with goals as large as this, I end up quitting because it seems too far out of reach. But I’m finishing this challenge.
3. Getting to Know Korea and its Regions
For the last two years I’ve been invited to give a annual presentation to the Korean National Park Service on the differences between Korean and American national parks. One of focuses of these presentations has been the ease in which people can travel to hike, learn about Korean culture/history and appreciate local food.
The example I like to use is Gayasan National Park in Gyeongsangnam-do (경상남도), in the south eastern corner of South Korea. Here a tourist can enjoy the beautiful views of Gayasan, visit the UNESCO protected Haeinsa Temple and enjoy rural dishes such Deodeokguie (더덕구이, a grilled root dish – that is delicious).
As someone who isn’t a massive temple or museum fan, I will focus on the food aspect.
Hiking hundred mountains took me to a wide variety of places in Korea I would never have thought to travel to. Such as to Suanbo in Chungju, to hike Woraksan where I had the local speciality Pheasant Sabu-sabu. Hiking Sobeaksan brought me to Danyang, which is famous for their garlic, and all the dishes they make stuffed full of it. Then theres the seafood, like Deokyusan‘s (덕유산) famous raw rainbow trout.
If you are curious about alcohol, each of the bigger mountains and regions of Korea have their own unique Makgeollie (막걸리) to try. For those who want to try a different take on Makogeollie, Dongdongju (동동주) is only readily available in country side restaurants next to mountains. And thats only scratching the surface of the variety of foods easy to find while hiking but rare in Seoul.
While you don’t need to be doing the challenge to end up eating this way, it will help you find places to go.
After the Challenge
With this challenge all but finished i needed to decide on where to go from here. I knew I needed a new goal or goals to work towards.
Ultimately, I decided I would (1) prepare and execute my first Ultra marathon and (2) hike the South Korean portion of the Beakdudeagan (백두대간), the mountain range that runs from North Korea to the southern portion of South Korea.
Ultra Marathon Running
I’m a hiker and I’ve never been a runner. Frankly theres no type of exercise that i dread more than road running. But in late 2019, I ran my first and second ever half marathons and I was building up to a full marathon. The reason for me pursuing an activity i desisted was because I was enamored by Ultra running. Watching videos about ultra runner and all around badass, Courtney Dauwalter, made me want to be crazy like her. Billy Yangs videos showed the emotion, both the energetic highs and the painful lows, that attracted me to the sport. I wanted to do that too. But a hiker cant just run an ultra marathon. I knew i needed to get better at running and thus my foray into road running races in 2019/2020.
But with the 100 mountains no longer my focus. I’ve been making moves to make this year the year I run my first ultra marathon (50k).
In the spring, I was accepted on to On Running’s On Trail Crew based out of Seoul. I had become a sponsored athlete with a crew! I was selected because they thought i had promise in trail running and also wanted hikers on the team. Since then I’ve been doing monthly trail running trainings and I’ve learned a lot.
After months of increasing the distances of my hikes, forcing myself to run on the road and doing more trail runs, I completed my first two trail running competitions. In the last two weeks, I traveled to Jeju for the Jeju Trail Race 18km and then did the High One Skyrace 20k.
I made a lot of stupid little mistakes, such as drinking a provided Monster energy drink before the race when I’ve never had energy drinks, to carrying objectively too much water for a race with checkpoints every 5km. I’ve learned that it doesnt matter how many youtube videos you watch about trailrunning, you will do things you shouldn’t in the first couple.
백두대간 – The Korean Ridge Challenge
Partly in an effort to train myself to be able to handle longer distances, I also started the 백두대간 challenge hosted by Black Yak. Likewise with 100 points, this challenge runs the length of Korea from Seoraksan National Park to Jirisan National Park. With a number of routes that are 25km+.
Many of the trails aren’t in good enough condition to safely trail run beyond for a couple minutes, but allow me to fast hike and practice being out on the mountain for 5-9+ hours. They also tend to be a lot less popular, so you can better enjoy nature without a ton of people out on the trail with you.
As of writing this post, I’ve completed 25% of the 백두대간.
It’s been surprising how the culture and hiking experience has been very different from the 100 mountains. When I’m farther I will write my review on that challenge as well.
Wow. Really an inspirational journey. I was following your blog after I started my hiking in South Korea. Your travel and hiking guides are really helping me for my hiking. Thank you. You are amazing