Chillin' Out: Seoul Forest Fountain and Gosu Cave

It has been a hot sunny summer in Seoul - not as hot as Shanghai, but regularly 30 degrees - so we have been searching for ways to beat the heat. This weekend we succeeded big time!

Saturday we returned to Seoul Forest Park, a large reclaimed forest in the city just a couple subway stops from our neighbourhood. Our objective was the new in-ground fountain we discovered there on our first visit to the park in April. There are a number of these in Seoul; see last week's post for shots of people enjoying the new one at Gwangwhamun Square. They are very popular, especially during this long hot summer.

We enjoyed a picnic lunch in the park, flew our Chinese kite and then went to check out the fountain. It operates every other hour so we had a bit of a wait for the next session. Once it started it was swarmed with kids and even a few big kids like me. It was a blast! And coooool!

On Sunday we went on a day trip out of the city with the Royal Asiatic Society. The RAS has been around since 1900 and the Korean chapter is very active, organizing periodic lectures and running tours most weekends to various cultural, historic or sceninc locations around Korea and even a few major tours to other countries (I've added their website address to the sidebar of the blog). The RAS ran the tour we took in May to the Dinosaur Museum in Goseong, on the south coast. This Sunday we were off to explore Gosu Cave, one of the largest and best karst caves in Korea, take a scenic boat cruise and check out a cultural site. A great little trip out of the city, at last.

Our general destination was Woraksan National Park, about 2.5 hours drive southeast of Seoul (it took a little longer for us because the bus driver got lost). Gosu Cave and Chongju Lake are located in Woraksan National Park, itself centered on a mountain range running northeast-southwest through north central Korea. The scenery in the area was nice: rugged, forested mountains (not the Rockies, but probably like much of the Appalachians). Gosu Cave is located across a river from the town of Danyang, which is also near a large limestone quarry. This quarry appears to have literally taken the top off a mountain! The stone appears to be used for making cement which is likely being trucked up the highway to use in the massive construction projects in Seoul and vicinity. Anyway, back to our trip.....

The cave entrance is located part way up a forested mountainside. In the valley below the cave entrance there is a parking lot with a collection of restaurants and souvenir shops. We went straight to the cave and joined the line of mostly Korean tourists on a 45 minute trek through 1.7 km of this 5.4 km long cave system. There is a metal boardwalk or stairs the whole way through the cave, so the walking is pretty easy. It is well lit, so good for photos. The cave was also cool compared to the outside - a thermometer in the cave showed it to be 18 degrees celsius. Nice! There is also a lot of groundwater flowing into and throughout the cave. The upper parts of the cave show scalloped erosional patterns that were probably formed by high water flow when the cave was younger. Mostly of the cave we that saw had large stalagtites (hanging from the roof) and stalagmites (on the floor) and lots of drapery-like speleothems hanging off the walls. It would have been nice to linger at interesting formations, but we were part of a constantly moving line of people winding their way along the cave boardwalk. It was still pretty fabulous!

View of the shops and restaurants in the valley below the cave. View up to cave entrance.

Map of cave and first cavern.

Our intrepid cavers ahead on the boardwalk and a few lumpy stalagmites.

Small side cave (maybe a half metre high) with pond. And close up.

The girls up in the stairway above. And a closer shot of our 2 cavers.

Large sheet-like stalagtites and some smaller but still dngerous looking ones above the boardwalk.

Composite drapery-like speleothems.

Caverns with very large stalagtites (see the people?).

View down (see Deb and the girls?) and up a spiral staircase in the cave.

Small rimmed pond. Large cavern with staircase.

Our intrepid cavers and the vendors imediately outside the cave exit.

Once out of the cave, we walked by the long row of souvenir and local mountain food (like mushrooms and roots) vendors, and enjoyed our picnic lunch (chicken wraps and salmon sandwiches) in the shade between the parking lot and a stream. The restaurants looked good here. If we ever come back, we'll save the picnic food for the highway stops enroute - where the options are more fast-food like - and enjoy the local fare in one of the restaurants.

After lunch we drove through the mountains to a boat launch on Chungju Lake, which is a reservoir for a large hydro dam. The scenery was nice, although the lake had a lot of flotsam (maybe from the recent rainstorm?). The commentary was mainly in Korean, with large portions of it translated for our benefit. Most of the boat passengers were Koreans and all seemed fascinated by the shapes of the rocky formations. One looked like a bird and another like a house or something else. For us it was mostly just pretty scenery. The girls did get to drive the boat for a bit!

The boat launch. Jin with friend at the bow.

Fellow passengers awed by odd rock formations.

Flotsam in the lake.

Yikes! Watch where you are driving this boat!!!!

Then we were off a little way down the lake to the Cheongpung Cultural Assets Complex. The complex, situated on a hilly promontory in Chongpu Lake, consists of a collection of historically and culturally significant buildings and artifacts rescued from the lower part of the valley before it was flooded in 1983 to form the lake/reservoir. Some of the things we saw included large Neolithic burial stones (dolmens), stele, a statue of Buddha, pavilions, a magistrates house and a commoners farm house. We also climbed the hill, past a fortress wall, for a great view from the topmost pavilion. The extra nice thing about this place was the lack of crowds. It was peaceful and scenic. A nice end to our great weekend. Unfortunately, we still had to drive home. With the Sunday traffic (everybody coming back to the city from weekend outings) and a short stop for a snack (ice cream cone!) it took us about 3 hours to get back to Seoul. Not too bad.

Commoner's housing compound.

Mid to late 20th century televivion in commoner's house. 10th century stone statue of Buddha .

Neolithic burial slabs (dolmens) and view out of pavilion.

18th century pavilion and guesthouse. View of the Complex from upper pavilion.

We all made it to the top!

So we had a great weekend staying cool, getting wet and going underground. Next weekend we've lined up a trip to the west coast. Yeah! The ocean at last! More about that in our next post.

Bye for now,

Derek, Deb Jin and Lili