Samseongsan

First photo: 6:58 a.m., a wooden boardwalk still in shadow. Saturday. Samseongsan rises on the border of Seoul and Anyang, right beside Gwanaksan, and its name means Mountain of Three Saints — after Wonhyo, Uisang and Yunpil, three Silla monks who, the story goes, built a hermitage here in the seventh century. Sammaksa, the temple said to have grown from it, is still on the slope.

The trail turns to granite quickly: slabs, rope rails, pines growing straight out of rock as if that were a reasonable thing to do. At the summit stone — 477 metres, carved right into it — a flag was cracking in the wind, and I did the only appropriate thing and opened my arms.

Down past the stream at the bottom, and at 11:36 the reward: ureong ssambap at Ureong Ssambap Igane, where the road starts up toward Sammaksa — a basket of leaves to wrap with, spicy pork, and a doenjang pot with more snails than broth. That should have been the day’s mountain. It wasn’t. See Namsan.