Skiing! Adventure Korea Style

If you are in Korea and don't know about the travel group Adventure Korea, you should. They put together travel services geared towards foreigners all around Korea based out of Seoul. This past weekend 8 of my friends and I participated in their trip to PyeongChang/Phoenix Park in Gangwon-Do in the Bangdong Valley, about 241km (3 hours) due east of Seoul. It was absolutely gorgeous, and we couldn't have asked for better conditions.



After you signed up through their website and wired money from your ATM, 112,000W (~$120) bought you transportation to and from, ski rentals, ski lift pass for 4 hours, and a night in a hostel at the base of the mountain. If you needed to rent any extras like goggles it was only 3,000W, or snow pants/jackets for 10,000W each. The only thing you couldn't rent were gloves, but the AK Staff warned us about this beforehand, and I bought a nice pair of ski gloves at a rest stop on the way for 10,000W.

Everything worked like clockwork - we were on the bus by 8am, and were on the road and in PyeongChang getting our rental equipment by 11:30 and were on the mountain skiing by 12:30pm. The mountain had two peaks and a number of challenging runs. I was a bit cocky at first and attempted the intermediate hill even though I haven't set foot on a mountain in 6 years. It took many, many, many falls before I got my ski legs, but it eventually came back to me, and was a great time.


(The view from our room)

If we had wanted to purchase a night ticket or a morning ticket we could have easily done so for 40,000, but we all opted for a night of relaxing pool/sauna, dinner, and drunken debauchery. The interesting thing was the entire little resort town basically closes down at 2am, with the exception of the mountain. There were hundreds of people still skiing at 2, 3, 4am which was something I had never seen before.



However with it only being 2am, we were left to entertain ourselves. If you're ever found in this situation, I whole heartedly recommend talking a walk over to the Bleu hotel and taking an elevator up to the 26th floor. Walk up 3 flights of stairs past the penthouse and you'll find a door that opens up to the roof which gives you the highest view of the entire area - and its breathtaking. I'm sure its against the rules, but eh, everything fun usually is.




All in all, it was an amazing trip and I recommend using Adventure Korea for any of their services. www.adventurekorea.com - trips include DMZ, temple stays, hiking, skiing, and various other activities - all of which I hope to abuse.