Jeju Island: Seongsan Ilchulbong Peak

We woke up at 5:30 this morning with the goal to get out the door by 7AM.  We wanted to get to Seongsan Ilchulbong after the sunrise rush and before the tour buses.  We figured out the night before that it takes about 1 hour 20 min to get there from our Villa, so early morning start it was.  Kids were ready, breakfast eaten, car packed for every Jeju adventure imaginable, and we were out of the driveway by 7:10.  

The kids kept themselves occupied with movies from the Ipad while we made the hour plus drive down beautiful highways.  The island is so gorgeous.  I kept commenting to Kevin how I actually think Jeju is more beautiful then Hawaii. It is just so clean and well kept. There are flowers everywhere and the palm trees line the highways.  Jeju has a few mountains, so Hawaii has it beat on the Mountain scenery, but as far as round about beauty, Jeju takes first in my opinion.  

We arrived at Seongsan Ilchulbong right about 8:30 in the morning.  Seongsan Ilchulbong is also known as Sunrise Peak and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  We also learned that is a 7 Natural Wonder of the World too.  The sunrises from the peak are said to be the most gorgeous sunrises to experience. Since the sun rose at 5:28 this morning, there was no possible way with kids to get up, ready, make the hour plus drive and make it up the mountain by that time.  We did however totally time it right and got to the peak when there wasn’t many people and there wasn’t a single bus.  We pretty much had the hike to ourselves.  

The peak is beautiful! It was so much bigger then I thought it would be.  Walking up and seeing the peak was just wow!  We took time to drink it all in before we started the stair climb hike to the top.

When I say stair climb, that’s exactly what this hike was, nothing but stairs straight up the 180 meters to the top.  Kevin was carrying Monster on his back, Big Sis and M&M were a little ways in front of us on their own, and I was keeping Little A’s spirits up.

Little A and I play the counting game on Korean hikes now.  She counts each and every step aloud, and I walk with her and hold her hand and count with her.  The hike then becomes a game and complaining goes from every second to never.  She gets so caught up in counting and jumping up the stairs and getting to the next 100, that she forgets she is walking up a million stairs.  Little A counted 479 stairs up and 625 stairs down.  Granted there were a few times that she stopped to rest and forgot what number she was on, so we might be give or take 20-100 stairs.  

While hiking up the peak, there were many rocks jutting out of the mountain.  There were signs explaining that the vertical points were created by unset ash piled up mixed with rain and then eroded over time. Theses vertical rocks created such dimension and beauty to the hike.  It was one of my favorite sites to see.

We finally made it to the top of the peak. The cloud cover was pretty heavy, but luckily it was moving, so we were able to get a few good views of the city below and the beautiful view. 

I wish I would have gotten some pictures of the volcanic dome, because from the pictures you can't tell that we are standing on the rim of the dome.  It was neat to see all the lush green and the makings of a volcano that came up from under the water.  

After snapping some amazing pictures, we made our decent down, the six hundred something stairs. The view of our decent was pretty crazy, you could almost see all the stairs at the very beginning.  

The hike was so beautiful and I’m so glad we did it.  It took about an hour to do the entire hike, and M&M’s legs were shaking so bad from all the stairs, but it was great and refreshing.  As we were exiting the hike route we noticed that busses and busses of tourist were beginning their hike.  Kevin and I gave each other a fist bump as we definitely picked the perfect time to make this hike.