Jeju Island Day 3 Part 1: Summiting Halla Mountain

I awoke well before dawn the next day to catch a bus to the trailhead of Halla Mountain. In the dark bus station I met two American Mormon missionaries, who were nice enough to not discuss religion at all and we had a pleasant chat about living in Korea. Once we arrived at the trail (about 6:30) I took off at a brisk clip. A man from the bus tried to keep up with me for a while and we had a nice chat, but then he told me to keep going on my own. I saw very few others on the rest of the way up. As the sun began to rise I saw the flaming orb through the trees and began to see the leafy underbrush surrounding me. I also saw a single metal track paralleling the path for a while, which I later saw was for a sled that brought supplies up to the shelter two thirds of the way up. There were also signs saying that one had to be past that shelter by a certain time of day or one would not be permitted to climb higher. Later the path began to have lava rock stairs, and bit past that the stairs started to be covered in ice and snow, and so I couldn't help thinking of it as the path of Fire and Ice (nerd alert!). I kept my speed up and reached the shelter, where I stopped for water, layering, and to eat a couple Mandarin oranges. Higher up the trees became sparser and I could see the peak rising above me. There was frost on all of the trees and in whorling patterns on the wooden steps near the top. I finished the 9.6 km ascent in almost exactly three hours and I think I was the first person to the summit that day, though just barely as a man nearly passed me at the end. At 1,950 meters, Hallasan is the tallest mountain in South Korea, but it is far enough South that even in December it was quite warm at the summit, that is until I stood near the crater edge and was chilled to the bone by the violent wind. A couple inches of ice were caked to the wooden rails and sign posts. The view of the crater was spectacular, though the crater lake was shrunken and frozen and generally not as impressive as it would be in a wetter season. After a half hour break, sharing gummy bears and mandarins with the several others who joined me (including the guy I started the hike with), I started jogging back down. The frost had already melted from the path and trees in the short time I was at the top now that the sun was out in full force (it being ten a.m.). I made good time until I ran into the hordes of Koreans hiking up the trail. Seriously, there were hundreds of people, and they were completely oblivious to the idea that someone might be coming down the mountain and so took up the entire path. I still managed to make it down in just over two hours, meaning that I had a lot of the day left, which was a bonus since I had planned to spend the whole day doing this hike. Thus I had time for several more adventures, to be detailed shortly.