For the trip, planned to last six days, I met up with my friend Brent in Daegu and proceeded to take an early morning six hour train ride northwards to the seaside town of Jeongdongjin (정동진). I'd been here before in the summer and it was worth another visit, particularly because we could take a fairly easy bus ride to our first main destination of Sokcho from there. In the summer I had gone swimming in the brilliant surf at Jeongdongjin beach, though of course all we could do now was look at the waves. The train station is practically located on the beach, and it's possible to be walking through sand less than a minute after disembarking.
After eating a lunch of fish and walking about the town, we grabbed a bus for the small city of Sokcho further on up the coast. We didn't arrive until after dark, and so it was only the next morning when we say the jagged, towering mass of the Taebaek ( 태백) mountain range cutting into the sky just beyond the limits of the city, our day's destination, Seoraksan, being the highest among them. I've seen and climbed plenty of mountains in Asia, some far taller than those of the Taebaek range, but the sheer stony and snow frosted ruggedness of the view from Sokcho felt new to me. Brent commented that they reminded him of the Rockies, though (perhaps ironically, as a Canadian) I've only seen the Rockies distantly from the window of the Vancouver airport.
