Here am I. Send me!: Snow!

Snow is not common in Busan. I've been told this a lot. Busan is not a very cold city so I've been told. I would beg to differ. Granted its not cold like negative numbers or low teens on a daily basis. So maybe, its not cold but to me its cold. I don't think I could every move farther north and deal with real winters with snow and cold daily temps. It's not that cold here but it feels cold. Actually the temperature is similar to Blairsville, GA and Wake Forest, NC. It's mostly in the 40's during the day but can get down below freezing. But as I said before, it rarely snows here. So imagine my surprise when I woke up one December morning to a very light dusting of snow on the ground. It made for some pretty pictures as I walked to school but it obviously wasn't much and mostly only accumulated in wind swept piles. But it sure was pretty and a fun to see.

Well, last week I found out that a high school classmate was in Busan for a business trip. Caleb had Saturday off so I made plans to meet up with him and his colleagues. They wanted to go to Geumjeongsanseong Fortress. Now I knew this would require some hiking and a cable car ride. It seemed like a lot of fun and something I hadn't done yet in Busan. So I met up with Caleb and his coworkers Chris and Zach. The day was a lot of fun! We had some wonderful views, great conversation, and LOTS of hiking. I was so incredibly sore the next few days. But it was well worth it all.

It was great getting to see Caleb and have my first visitor from home!

The hike was gorgeous! I loved it all! The few days prior to this hike it had been really cold in Busan. I remember either the day before or two days before when I was walking to school it looked like the trees on the top of the mountain were covered in ice. Much like trees at home look when a fog freezes on the mountain overnight. It didn't look like snow but ice because the tree tops were covered. It was beautiful but I didn't think much about it. When we started our hike we rode cable cars up to the fortress. We first started by hiking towards the East Gate. I was shocked to see snow once we started hiking. I continued to be shocked and surprised by the snow as we hiked from the East Gate to the South Gate and then continued in what we hoped was the direction to Seokbulsa Temple. There was so much snow. In some places it was 2-3 inches deep and the trail was covered in snow. I loved it! Hiking in the snow is so much fun! Since its rare and it was unexpected I took quite a few pictures of my day hiking in the snow! I would love to have that experience again one day!

This is part of the walls near the East Gate. There wasn't as much snow here.

The back side of the wall near the East Gate had snow piled up as the wind had swept it there so it was a few inches deep!

It also was a good wet snow! It would have been a great snow to play and sled in!

East Gate watch tower.

I think we actually hiked over to those rocks on the other mountain top. If not, we hiked to some very similar to them.

South Gate: More people and more snow!

This guy found an awesome place to sit and enjoy the views!

We hiked a lot! We thought we were following the trail to Seokbulsa Temple after asking some locals for information while looking at a map that was in Korean. They showed us which direction to go and where we should turn on the next trail. It was headed down the mountain and it seemed right. There was one place where we had to choose two options and we made an educated guess on which one to follow. We also had some directions from someone else that said we would find soccer volleyball courts in a village and that we would then be close to the trail. So we were excited to find these soccer volleyball courts every where in this village that we came too. I've never played soccer volleyball but it looks like fun. Basically its a tennis court and you play volleyball but with your feet (so basically soccer volleys). Maybe I can try it one day. I haven't seen any courts near me though. Well after we were unsuccessful in trying to find the temple trail I pulled it up on my phone. We were literally on the other side of the mountain from where we wanted to be. So we got a taxi to drive us over to the trail of the temple and then hiked up a little more to it. It was a beautiful temple.

These cravings on the sides of the rocks were huge!

It's hard to see but near the head in the middle on the left side of the rock that hangs over is a bell. It was so high up I have no clue who could have been able to ring it. I would love to know the purpose of it too.

I loved this view.

But I loved it more when you zoom in on just the mountains.

The bell is at the top left of this picture. I couldn't get it to move up next to the other one about the bell but at least you can see it in this one.