For the long weekend Keith and I went to Seoraksan National Park to search for ice to climb. We found many beautiful falls (see the pictures above) however, the ice wasn't good enough to climb on most of them. Despite the lack of good ice, we had a wonderful time hiking around in the snow in our boots and crampons. We finally found one good frozen waterfall on our third day of searching in the southern part of the park however, we were told that their were several 15m climbs you could top rope and this turned out not to be true. Not only was our rope not long enough (it was a 70m waterfall) but neither of us felt comfortable leading due to our lack of experience. Soooo....we headed home one day early and yesterday went into Seoul to go climbing at the indoor ice climbing gym. Apparently it is the highest ice climbing wall in the world and is like a giant freezer with routes of varying lengths up each wall (the longest being 20 meters). We got great instruction from one of the climbers who worked there (he spoke no english so he got quite creative when giving us pointers) and had a wonderful time. You can check out the O2 website if you are interested in seeing some pictures but the text is mostly in Korean. http://www.o2o2.co.kr/
It was a wonderful weekend and it was great to spend time alone with Keith.