Mount Hallasan, Jeju, South Korea

Just About Mt Hallasan

Mt Hallasan summit, crater

Mt Hallasan, being an extinct volcano, is the highest mountain in South Korea. Located right in the centre of Jeju Island, standing at a height of 1950m.  Mt Hallasan was designated as a National Park on 24 March 1970 and as an area under the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in December 2002. There are 4 trails to trek at Mt Hallasan, namely Eorimok Trail, Yeongsil Trail, Seongpanak Trail, and Gwaneumsa Trail. Only 2 trails will lead to the summit which is a crater named Baeknokdam. All the trails start at different locations with some locations having inter-city bus service stopping at these start points. For the Seongpanak Trail, taking the road 1131 to the east will bring you to the start point. Gwaneumsa Trail, it will be road 1117 to the north. Eorimok and Yeongsil Trail, it will be the road 1139 to the west of Mt Hallasan. Mt Hallasan offers different spectacular scenery for each individual season.  In winter, snow will cover the trail from the start point all the way to the summit. Our trek to Mt Hallasan was at the beginning of the winter months in early December 2009, and snow was already present even at the start point at an altitude of just 600m. The climb to the summit takes about 4~5hrs, depending which trail to take. Some prefer to take different routes for the ascent and descend. For us, we returned the same we came as our rental car was parked at the Seongpanak entrance.

Gimpo Airport, Flight to Jeju

Getting There

We took a night flight from Singapore and arrived at Incheon International airport the next morning at 6:30am. The entire airport looked deserted with very few planes on the tarmac. Temperature was cold at 0 degree Celsius on the outside. After clearing immigration and getting our bags, we made out way to the underground airport express train (AREX) to the Gimpo domestic airport. This AREX is a new train line linked to Gimpo airport and some stations in between. Plans are in placed to have this AREX extend all the way to the heart of Seoul. But as of now, to get to central Seoul using trains, you will need to change to a local subway at Gimpo airport which is linked to Seoul city. Of course there are always the buses and taxis at Incheon airport. Taxis will cost much more and so bus will be a better option for budget travelers. When we reached Gimpo airport, we immediately checked in our luggage and went for some Dunkin Donuts. Flights between Gimpo and Jeju are very frequent, almost in hourly interval. We boarded our flight at 10:25am and landed in the warmer Jeju Island around 12 noon.  Once we entered the arrival halls, we made our way to our pre-booked rental car. English is still a problem for Koreans even serving in the tourism industry. But of course those that could speak very fluent will be those staffs stationed at the airport information counter. After so sign language and finger pointing here and there. We got the car number and proceeded to the outside car park to get our car. The rental car park lot is an actual airport car park. I had to pay for the parking fee when I tried to leave the car park area. I paid about 2000 won as the parking fee for the rental car. 

Our rental car in Jeju

Driving on the right side was uncomfortable and stressful initially. But after some practice, I got the hang of it and the entire driving experience in Jeju wasn’t too bad. Jeju is considered to be a less traffic island, so the number of cars in the road is less. We took the scenic west bound route as recommended by the KTO (Korea tourism office) guidebook which plies along the coast. The average speed on the island is about 50km/h, esp. in the town area and you can only hit 70km/h on those bigger highways. The car has a GPS but it is in Korean and we spent quite a considerable amount of time trying to use it. In the end, we gave up and rely just on the maps that we got from the Singapore KTO for our 3 days self drive in Jeju.

Outside the Kitchen Oh Cafe

 As we were driving along the west coast of Jeju, we were on the lookout for a place to have lunch. Surviving just on those donuts at Gimpo airport wasn’t enough. Many shops have signs in Korean which we didn’t understand. Of course we could just go in and point to their menu. But restaurants outside of the city area have little customers and we were not sure if they were really open for business. Then we came across a unique restaurant by the sea with the name “Kitchen Oh”. That sounded English and we just made a quick U-turn into the restaurant car park.

Pork Cutlet, yum yum

The restaurant has a few customers at that time and we were assured that they were open for business. The restaurant served Japanese food which is out favorite and we ordered tonkatsu (pork cutlet). We really took a long break at the restaurant, admiring the décor and the nice photographs the owner took and hanged on the walls. It was more like a simple boutique restaurant and after our meal; we took a walk down a flight of stone stairs all the way to the sea. It was cold with the strong winds and we didn’t stay too long before heading back to our car and continued our journey. 

Finding our hotel wasn’t easy. We had booked our accommodation at the KAL hotel all the way in the south, near the Seogwipo City. We did some sightseeing along the west coast and by 7pm, we were still somewhere in the south-west area and it was already dark. In winter, daylight is short, sunrise is about 630am, and sunset is about 6pm. By 7pm, it was already pitch dark. We managed to reach our hotel at 8:30pm after spotted out hotel as we were driving along the south coast line. It was a tired day then because we did not catch any sleep on our 6hr flight from Singapore. So we just settle our dinner at the hotel café and off to sleep in preparation for the next day hike to Mt Hallasan.

Seongpanak Car Park

 The next morning, we were late. The alarm that we set was still Singapore time, which is one hr later than Korea local time. We quickly changed into our hiking gear, drowned down a cup of install noodles, grabbed our prepared food and jumped into our car. Outside temperature was still cold, but much better than the temperature in Seoul. We hit the road and drove towards highway 1131, which leads all the way to Jeju-si in the north. This road also leads to our start point for the hike which is the Seongpanak Trail entrance. Once our car started to ascend higher on the mountain road, we could see cold accumulating at the sides of the road. Happy we were that we would be seeing snow for our climb. At 8am, we reached the car park of the Seongpanak entrance. There is a shop that sells some snacks and hiking stuffs. Didn’t go into the shop as we are eager to start the climb because we were an hour late. To ascent the summit, you must reach the Azalea Field Shelter by 12noon, and by 1:30pm, all visitors must leave the summit area.

Start of Seongpanak Trail

  

Trail near the start point

 At the trail entrance, we bought entrance tickets (400won each) and paid for our parking (1000 won).  The trail started off with a combination of rocks and snow. Grip on our hiking shoes were good enough at that point. But we do see many Korean hikers having a variety of shoes and type. Some has mini crampons attached to their hiking boots. And some just had their sports shoes. I wonder did they slip and fall down. For us, it was still okay at the beginning, but we climbed higher and the snow on the trail thickened, there were times we did some acrobat stunts to keep ourselves for falling. The trail was well marked and ropes were on both sides. Getting lost is of very slim chance and I would like to say the national park authorities really did a good job allowing visitor to appreciate the nature of Mt Hallasan and ensuring visitors’ safety.

Signboard on the 12noon timeline

The above is the signboard saying that we must reach the Azalea shelter by 12noon if we want to ascent the summit.

Snow covered forest grounds

For the 1st 2 hours, we hiked through forest of tall fir trees, with their leaves still in greens while the forest floor is covered with snow. At around 11:15am, we left the fir forest and entered into a wide opening and had an unblocked view of the summit.  Another further walk of 15mins and we reached the Azalea shelter (Jindallabat shelter).  There seemed to be some shop at the Jindallabat shelter, but we didn’t want to waste time to shop around or rest at the shelter. We carried on up the stairs towards the summit.

Reached the clearing near Jindallabat Shelter

Stairs leading to the summit

From this point onwards, we had an uninterrupted view of the entire Jeju Island, including the surrounding ocean. The feeling was like climbing Mt Fuji, a volcano-like landscape where you are exposed to the elements of strong winds and cloudless skies. 

Clear view of Jeju island

Me, taking a breather

Ice flakes anyone ?

There were ice flakes attached to the wooden fence at the side of the stairs. The direction of the ice flakes pointing in the direction where strong cold winds blew the night below. After 1hr30mins, we reached the crowded summit, overlooking the crater below us. 

At the summit

  

There were hordes of hikers at the summit as well, celebrating their climb over their hot coffee and lunch. As everyone needs to start their descend from the summit at 1:30pm, everyone was busy trying to capture every moment with their cameras and video-cam. There was a park ranger station at the summit, shouting out loud in Korean periodically at us. Even though we didn’t understand Korean, I guessed that he was reminding us to start out descent at 1:30pm. The national park has strict rules that all hikers must leave the park by the end of the day. Camping overnight or hiking in the night is prohibited. Maybe this is the way they keep the park safe and prevent hikers lost in the mountains.

Baekonkdam summit crater

The summit marker

After queuing for our turns for quite a while, we finally got out turn to take a picture with the summit wooden pole marker. After which, we found ourselves a nice spot to enjoy our long awaiting hot drink and snacks. Most of the hikers that start from the Seongpanak Trail will descend by the Gwaneumsa Trail. For us we took the same trail as our car was parked at out start point. The descend was less crowded and most of the time we have the entire trail to ourselves. As the trail was covered in snow at higher altitude, we took cautious steps while making our way down. Again we did some acrobatic stunts trying to maintain our balance. We took our own sweet time on our descend and reached the car park around 4:30pm. Throughout the entire climb, the sun was never above our heads, it just traverse across the sky from the 10am angle to the 4pm angle, giving the surroundings a warm sunset view. At the car park, we saw taxis dropping hikers and I thought they are going to do the climb illegally. In the end these hikers were just folks that descended using the Gwaneumsa trail and took a taxi to bring them back to the Seongpanak entrance to get their cars. It was still very cold at 2 degrees celsius and we just jump into our car, started the engine to warm ourselves up before driving downhill back to Seogwipo-si where our hotel was. It was 6:30pm and before we turned into our hotel, we stopped at a local Korean restaurant and ordered some local dishes. It was well? Quite spicy and in big proportions that I considered over ordered. Not my liking, but guess we were just too hungry to reject anything edible.

The rest of the stay in Korea is covered in another blog post. Jeju, Seoul Nov 2009

Personally I would rate this climb an easy but yet most enjoyable one. Making the ascend and descend all in one’s day trek, and able to sleep comfortably in our hotel to rest ourselves. The total ascend may be 1400m in just 4hrs, but it is not that tough because the trail is stretched over a 10km distance which gives hikers a gradual and consistent ascend, making it less tiring for hikers to enjoy the scenery and not panting all the way up to the summit.

Trekking Trail Information on Mt Hallasan

Seongpanak à Summit (Dongneung, East Ridge), 9.6km, 4hrs30mins one way.
Gwaneumsa Trail   à  Summit (Dongneung, East Ridge), 8.7km, 5hrs one way
Eorimok Trail  à Witsaeoreum Shelter, 3.7km, 1hr30mins one way.
Yeongsil Trail  à  Witsaeoreum Shelter, 4.7km, 2hr one way.

Note: Only Seongpanak and Gwaneumsa trail is opened to the public to reach the summit.