Deogyusan

The night before was the other half of the trip: a camper van parked in Muju’s Gucheondong valley, meat over a charcoal fire, a pot of ramyeon, a fire burning down into the dark. Friday night in the mountains, done properly.

The schedule didn’t leave time for the full climb, so I’ll confess it up front: I took the gondola. It lifts you from the resort to Seolcheonbong at 1,520 metres. The last stretch to Hyangjeokbong, 1,614 metres — the top of Deogyusan and the fourth-highest mountain in South Korea — you still walk. I walked it slowly, because the view kept stopping me.

Deogyu means something like ‘abundant virtue’, and the mountain is generous that way: ridge after ridge going blue toward the horizon. Up here grow the yews Koreans describe as ‘a thousand years alive, a thousand years dead’. Gondola or not, I’d recommend it to anyone.