Backcountry Skiing in South Korea

Let me first state that I have done no skiing in the back country of South Korea. Here I discuss yo-yoing at ski resorts, skinning up and skiing down. In some places it is considered poaching...

Fitness skinning at resorts, a popular pastime in Europe, is frowned upon in North America (like mastrubating on Airplanes?), and it is flat iligal in South Korea where skiing is mostly done in crowded, fenced-off ski slopes and man-made snow that often ends with the boundry of the ski area. 
Korea is a mountainous country but elevations are around 1500m, hills are densely forested, and snow accumulation is rare and inadequate for most of winter. Temperatures in the winter months are very low and steady, which allows for a good snowmaking. 

Overview of Korean Ski Resorts

There are three major ski resorts: YongPyong (용평) is the best, Muju (무주) is a close second, and Hi-One is a newer and nicely equiped but lacks in vertical drop and diversity. There are a dozen or so smaller resorts. I should mention also that Koreans have perfected the science of making and grooming snow.

 YongPyong is the top ski resort in Korea. The Rainbow runs in particular are best, and I believe they satisfy international requirements for slalom racing. 

There is a nicely pitched long trail called Rainbow Paradise. With near 700 m of gain it is good for fitness skinning. I had good luck doing laps early in the morning before 8am, and late at night after 10 pm. Yong Pyong is the only place where I have met local uphillers! There is a ski mountaineering race event at Yongpyong in february. Unfortunately it didn't happened the year I was there.

Muju resort I have visited the most due to its proximity to Daejeon, a hi-tech city where KAIST is located. I was enrolled in a graduate program there in 2009/2010.

KAIST is a highly competitive and demanding school and I needed badly to blow out some steam. And there is simply no better way of blowing out steam than doing fitness laps at ski resorts. One problem: at Muju, the ski patrolers were determined to enforce the no-uphill policy. So I become inventive in my ways to get my fix. That included skinning up after midnight, early in the morning, and during snowmaking. Conditions at Muju vary with elevation, and sometime at night it would get foggy, or icy to the point that I had to use crampons on steep sections. At these times it felt like I was doing a real ski-mountaineering. 

 I have to say that Koreans are generally very nice and that they cut me a lot of slack, letting me do my resort laps. Mostly because I am a foreigner, but also because they saw someone insanely obsessed in his determination to get his uphill fix.
"... I went skiing again. Man crafted resort snow. Usually I go early, around 7:30, before they open the resort. I skin up, ski down, and call it a day. Today I was a little late. Shortly after I take off the first ski patrol comes down, shit. I've been edgy lately: too much studying, too much spicy Korean food and too little outdoors... So he stops next to me and I know the drill. But I drove for two and half hours in the morning in double digit negatives. The cogs and springs in my brain spun funny. I wait for him to stop and then I sprint straight up. Ha! Maybe I will get a hundred meters more before getting kicked out? The next patrol comes down, and I do the same. Wow, I pass four patrollers like that. They shout, wistle, wave polls, call the radio...but cant stop the mad foreigner. I don't look back. I keep going, waiting for the snowmobile to pick me up. But it didn't come. Amazingly they let me go. It was -11 at the lower resort and houling near the top at whooping 1600m. 

Another day of exciting outdoors!

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