Seoraksan National Park - Part II

Day1: Sinheungsa and Biryong falls

After checking into Sorak Park Hotel, we had a short coffee break (I brought my own kopi-o kosong from Singapore. I find the coffee in Korea quite bland.) before heading to the national park. It’s a nice leisurely walk that will take you 15-20 minutes to get to the park entrance. (Or take the bus if you do not want to walk).

The park entrance fee was 3500 won per person. There are no multi-day passes. You just pay each day you enter the park.

It was about 3:30pm when we got to the park. It was probably low season and late in the afternoon. The park was relatively quiet and that was very nice.

My initial plan was to do the cable car trip and then visit the Sinheungsa Temple. However, the cable car was not in operation due to strong winds. BTW, we saw a warning notice that if you take the cable car up the peak and it has to stop operation due to strong winds, then you have to trek your way down! So pay heed!

With the cable car shut down, we visited the Sinheungsa Temple first. Visitors will encounter the stately big bronze Buddha statue first. It turn out to be smaller than what I had imagined, but is still pretty impressive.

The Big Buddha of Sinheungsa temple

The temple proper is slightly further up past a river. Half of the temple ground were closed as some construction or repairs were going on. None of the halls or buildings were particularly spectacular. But there was a nice solemn and peaceful atmosphere which I like.

A stone lantern in the temple compound. The mountain peaks surrounds the temple. It is very atmospheric.

The Hall of Extreme Happiness - dedicated to the Amitabha Buddha

The river by the temple is also very nice and there are steps to get down to the river.

The river that runs by the temple. You can walk down to the river. The bare rocks in the distance is Ulsan Bawi, which we were going up the next day.

With just about 2-3 hours of daylight left, we decided we could still do the Biryeong falls trek. This is a trek to the Biryeong waterfalls and it’s a relatively easy trek with just a slight ascend.

The trails are very well maintained without any big steps. Along the way, you will pass by the Yukdam falls and a suspension bridge.

Suspension bridge on the Biryeong Falls trek. Don't worry, it's very stable!

Part of the trail is a series of stairs mounted on a cliff!

I must say I wasn’t impressed with the Biryeong falls at all… It’s a rather small waterfall. I think what was supposed to be special about this falls is not the size, but the shape. It is supposed to resemble a flying dragon (hence the name Biryeong 飞龙 which literally means flying dragon), though I think it requires quite a bit of imagination…

This is the Flying Dragon falls... Does it look like a dragon?

Beyond the Biryeong falls, you can go further to a observatory to see another waterfall. It looks like a speculator waterfall on the other side of the mountain. The sign says 800m, which seemed near enough. So we started going up the stairs…

After what seemed like a long time, the sign says it’s still 700m away. And when the sign says it’s still 600m after what we were sure was more than 100m of walking up stairs, we decided to turn back. I am not sure how the distance were measured. It definitely wasn’t the distance we walked up the stairs. I suspect it was a point to point measurement…

In any case, the sun had set behind the mountains and daylight was fading. We didn’t want to trek in the dark back (I did bring torchlight for this trip but left it in the hotel…). So we just turned back.

It was about 7:30pm when we reach the entrance of the park. All the restaurants were closed. It was also too late to take the bus to Sokcho for dinner. We ended up having dinner in one of the mom-and-pop restaurant near Hotel Sorak Park. We were the only customers. I had a bibimbap for 8000won. It wasn’t nice… We decided we would go to Sokcho for dinner the next day.

There were 2 convenience cum souvenir stores still open about 8:30pm and we got cup noodles for breakfast the next day.

When we got back to the hotel, the wind really picked up and was very strong. The door to the balcony was banging… I imagine it would be scary if you are still trekking out there in the dark...

BTW, the hotel room has both air conditioning and heater. But we didn’t use either during our stay as the temperature was comfortable for us.