Mt. Halla

I finally got out to climb "The Mountain." You see, Jeju-do is a pretty small island that is dominated in the center by a mountain, Hallasan, or Halla Mountain. I don't mean to confuse you by saying climb, because I didn't rock climb up it. "Climbing" is the Korean way of saying "Hiking."

I hiked with the rock climbing club. Yes, I've come to find out that not only am I a member of the climbing gym, but it's also a sort of club that does things together. We went out as a group and hiked up Halla Mountain this weekend. There are 4 trails or "courses" on the mountain. The two on the East Side lead to the top. We took one of the easier ones up the West Side to the "Three Oreums." What is an 'oreum' you might ask? Well, in the volcanic island of Jeju-do, these oreums are like mini-mountains or hills formed by some sort of volcanic "bubbling". I think there's about 300 of them scattered about the island. The ones we went to are the three highest.

It turned out to be a fantastic day with beautiful weather. It was very clear all day. I only put this picture up because it looked cool with that one cloud running across the ridge line. That was about the only cloud we saw all day. The people in the picture are about half of the group from the climbing club we hiked with.