Ski the East

This weekend was a long one for us in Korea; we had Monday off to celebrate Lunar New Year. New Year's Day was technically on Sunday, but since it's a big holiday here we got the extra day off. Angie and I took advantage of the extra day to take a ski trip up north. We went about 4 hours directly north of Daegu, but east of Seoul. The mountain was called High1. We signed up through a trip organizer, so all we had to do was give our information, transfer money into his bank account, and all the plans were made for us. We got a bus trip there and back, 2 days of skiing and equipment rentals, dinner, one night in a hotel, and a snow suit rental for about 200,000 won (about $200). Not too shabby.

We couldn't have asked for a better weekend. The weather was beautiful, conditions were perfect, the mountain was good size with plenty of challenging terrain, and it was rather sparsely populated because of the holiday. The view from the top was phenomenal. I've never seen anything like it back home. I tried to capture it on video for the folks at home, but honestly, the camera doesn't even do it justice.

For whatever reason, they seem to think that everyone wants to listen to Korean pop and ballad music while they ski, so they blast it all over the mountain from speakers on the side of the trail. I found myself dancing while Angie adjusted her bindings, and when she looked up she burst out laughing and announced that we had to record it. So here it is. Make sure you go pee before you watch it though...neither one of us can watch it without laughing, and we've seen it about 30 times now.

There were a couple differences between the way things are done at ski resorts back home and the way they're done here. When they pack up their skis to go home, instead of just brushing the snow off, they blow it off with a high pressure air gun. They're quite meticulous. When you get on the lift at home you just ski right up to it; here, they open a little gate which slides you onto a conveyor belt that delivers you to the lift. I felt like a package at UPS. We also got to ride on a gondola (they don't have any left in Maine...Sugarloaf used to have them, but they got rid of them years ago). Here's a picture of one in case you've never seen one. We took a ride down the mountain on a little monorail cart, too. It was a little scary at times because I thought it might tip over, but thankfully it safely delivered me to the bottom. Last, here's a peek at a Korean-style hotel room. Yes, I slept on a thin mat on the floor, and my pillow was essentially a little bag of rice. Not the most comfortable night of sleep I've ever had, but I folded my mat in half and that made it a little more tolerable.