Woraksan (월악산)

Yeongbong (영봉)

The perfect way to start another year of adventures: hiking on a mountain! And this wasn’t just any mountain. Woraksan National Park (월악산국립공원) is famous for this very dramatic and incredibly steep peak. This is Yeongbong (영봉)!

A close-up image of the summit stele on Yeongbong summit. Yeongbong is written in Korean text, and below is the elevation of 1097 meters. The stone is grey, speckled with white, black and orange. There is a wooden railing beyond the stele, and the platform below the stele is caked with snow and ice.
Yeongbong – the top of Woraksan National Park

The first day of the new year dawned clear and crisp. This time, we began after dawn, so that the rays of the morning sun would help us find our way through the substantial snow we expected to find on the mountain. We were extremely happy to be there – but getting there hadn’t been easy!

The night before, the mountain village below Yeongbong had been packed with hikers. All the accommodation was booked up to the point that many businesses not only turned us away, but scoffed at our audacity for arriving without a booking during one of the busiest times of year. Lesson learned! We walked along the darkened village, cold and a little desperate. But we got lucky: we finally found a kind soul willing to open up an extra room for us.

An image of trees coated by hoar frost in a snowy forest. The trunks and thicker branches of the trees are black, in contrast to the white tips and smaller twigs. There are many frozen trees in the image. Beyond the trees, there is a faint, foggy shape of a mountain.
The frozen forest

In the morning, our New Year’s Day mountain mission had us weaving our way upwards through the snowy forest. The snow on the ground grew thicker the further up the trail we went. Still, it wasn’t a silent, snowy dreamland. Signs of life stirred on the forest floor. We caught sight of a couple of mice, and heard many more. There were tracks of larger animals in the fresh snow, and busy birds called overhead.

An image of the author's husband, his back to the camera as he walks along a tree-lined trail. Snow blankets the forest floor, and makes the green of the pine needles on the trees appear paler.
On the trail

After turning a corner, the forest thinned out. Our snowy path transformed into a winding spiral staircase clinging to Yeongbong’s dizzying cliffs!  The steps were caked with ice, so we climbed slowly and gripped the railings. But the views were incredible! We could see brightly colored hikers far below us. Above, gnarled pines stretched their branches out, away from the precipitous rocks.

An image showing the incredible staircase used to access the summit. It is a spiral construction, made of brown steel affixed to the adjacent rocky cliff. In this image, you can see two hikers ascending. The forest appears far below. Snow blankets everything: the trees, the surfaces of the rocks on the cliff and the staircase.
Steep steps up

At the top, we gazed east towards Sobaeksan: our previous day’s peak. I thought I caught a glimpse of it before thick clouds rolled in and blanketed our view. But it could have been another mountain in the untouched wilderness that Woraksan is famous for!

An image of a small icicle, beyond which is a mountain ridge. Brown trees are visible on the slopes, but indistinct. More distant ridges disappear into the thick fog.
A view from the top

Our time with Yeongbong’s summit stele was truncated by chill, but we descended happy and accomplished.

An image of the author and her husband with the summit stele. The author leans against the summit stele, one foot on a rock and her face covered by a blue scarf. The author's husband holds the camera and appears in the foreground, his face wrapped in a green scarf.
At the summit

At the bottom, the sun made another appearance and prompted us to stay. We lingered at a little restaurant to have a celebratory brunch before waving goodbye to Woraksan National Park and the dizzying heights of Yeongbong. What a perfect way to start the new year!

An image with a brightly colored Korean temple with a curving roof in the foreground. In the background, the clouds are breaking up to reveal blue sky, and the jagged and snowy ridge of Woraksan is faintly visible.
Deokjusa Temple & Woraksan

Know and Go! Woraksan – Woraksan

Transportation

In terms of ease of access, Woraksan National Park‘s Yeongbong peak is medium-difficulty. Direct buses run from Woraksan National Park to Seoul and vice versa. But if you’re coming from elsewhere, you’ll need to transfer to a local bus. Ask the driver to stop in Hansu village (한수면) for the trailhead nearest the peak.

Chungju, the closest city to the northwest, is an option for a transit hub that’s full of restaurants, supermarkets and motels. As we were coming from nearby Sobaeksan, we took a route through Chungju and Suanbo to access this park.

Bear in mind that these directions only apply to Yeongbong-centered hikes. This park has multiple distinct areas containing trails and these areas are quite far from one another. Having your own transportation would enable you to visit more of this park.

Hike & Run

Although the park does have multiple hiking trails, without a doubt the most popular ones are the trails leading to Yeongbong from the villages Hansu and Deokju. There’s good reason these routes get the most traffic: the starting points have food and accommodation, and are easy (enough) to get to using public transit. The short hike up to a very dramatic peak is another draw.

An image depicting one of the open hiking areas in Woraksan National Park. There are four trails leading to the summit, two of them from the Deokju valley.
Yeongbong trail map

But there are great options in other areas too! The hiking trails aren’t continuous, but Woraksan National Park has many peaks that are also very much worth your while.

Stay & Eat

As mentioned above, the valley west of Yeongbong has restaurants and accommodation near the trailheads. Nearby Chungju and Suanbo are further afield but have more options for supermarkets and accommodation.

As always, we packed our own provisions. We stocked up on apples, made some PB and J sandwiches and brought energy bars. But we also decided to enjoy a nice sit and some local fare in Deokju after our climb.

Other Notes

Yeongbong is a steep and dramatic peak at an elevation of 1097 m. It’s an important summit on the Korean 100 summits challenge, noted by Black Yak here and the Korea Forest Service here.

Kent and I visited Yeongbong on New Year’s Day in January 2016. This was the 9th national park we visited during our mountain mission year. Our hike was a short, snowy 8.9 km out-and-back.

We entered and exited the park by way of Hansu, a village at the foot of the Woraksan’s Yeongbong.

In addition to the precipitous peak, Woraksan also draws visitors hoping to catch a glimpse of the elusive and endangered Korean goral antelope. Gorals were recently reintroduced to Woraksan, and is one of four national parks known to be goral habitat. Woraksan even features a goral as its logo! Although we did spot many animals and their tracks during our visit to this park, we were not so lucky as to spot a goral this time.

I did some research for our Yeongbong adventure using the Korea National Park service website.

Head back to the Woraksan main page for more on this wonderful park. Or, enjoy more national parks and 120 summits with Kent and I!


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