2009 Taebaek Snow Festival
After a four hour bus ride, we arrived at Yongyeon Cave. It was snowing lightly, which was a welcome sight. We changed to a shuttle bus to travel from the car park to the cave entrance.
Inside was a well made path to follow, so Young Hoon let us go by ourselves. There were beautiful stalagmites, stalactites, stone pillars, cave pearls, cave corals and fountains with lovely lights for more ambience. Thankfully we were given helmets to wear, as a few times the roof of the cave was incredibly low. At other times we were in huge cavernous rooms.
At the end of the cave visit we had to wait a while for everyone to come out and then back on the shuttle bus to return to our waiting AK bus. I guess we had some time to kill, as a few of us went to war with the snow. Just a word of warning; Kim Driver has exceptional aim. Make sure that, if you have a snow fight, and he’s involved he’s on your side. I found out the hard way!
We got back on the bus for a chance to warm up briefly as we travelled to the snow festival. When we arrived, we were informed that due to the huge numbers of people we would have to walk two kilometres to get to the actual festival. It was a nice stroll through a muddy car park and up a snow covered footpath. When we arrived Young Hoon kept us together until we arrived at the snow sculptures. We had a group photo, and then we all went our separate ways to explore the festival for a couple of hours.
The huge sculptures were amazing. They showed a lot of detail, but are difficult to take photos of. You really have to push to get your friends in so you can take a decent shot.
There was a performance on the stage, closely related to norae-bang, which at times was pleasant to hear. The highlight for me was sledding. It had been closed for a while, but they opened it up again for five of us AK chicks mainly for videos and photos [Editor’s note: because somebody had been injured while sliding]. But I think we also flattened out some of the bumps too, as we screamed and spun our way down the sled path.
After that, my wee group of friends wandered over to the coal museum. It was a chance to warm up again as we looked at some familiar and other oddly named rocks. We saw something that looked like a cousin to kryptonite, but black. We only had time to see the first two exhibitions out of eight, before rejoining all the rest of the AK crowd and to make our way, via a small convenience store, back to the bus.
We checked into our motel, then had delicious 삼겹살 for dinner. After that we had free time, where my brother, our friends and I returned to our room and talked and laughed till bedtime.
Early the next day, after toast and jam for breakfast, (those who were willing) were off for the tramp up a mountain. When we arrived around 9am; it was already busy. The Hoon got our tickets and told the man checking them to let us all in. And we were off. As the hike is the same path up and down, we could go at our own pace. Two girls must have power-walked all the way there and back. I saw them at the very beginning and then again when they were on there way back down. And I was still 15 mins away from the summit. Bloody machines!
I took many photos on the way up which also gave me regular needed breaks. We stopped often to let some people catch up, while the main group leaders got their breath back. The scenery was amazing, thick snow covering the path and trees. And we were really fortunate that it started clearing while we were at the top. The view would be spectacular on a really clear day, but what we got was pretty damn good.
On the way down, we were consistently confronted with hoards of people, still making there way up, and walking three or four abreast. This made it really hard to get passed; until I gave up being nice and started plowing my way down the mountain. A slow jog and laughing like a lunatic seemed to be the best way to clear the path.
I’m glad we went as early as we did, and would recommend any future groups to not sleep in, be ready early to avoid this kind of rush. Even go earlier if it’s possible.
After the hike we went back to our motel for a well deserved lunch, to get changed and to pick up the non-hikers. Then sadly we had to leave the beautiful snow covered landscape for the big drab city once more.
