Daedunsan (Daedun Mountain)...

 

Daedansan:

On the way home from our weekend in Seoul, we wanted to see some fall colors. I was reminded by Tom, that there was a bridge outside of Daejeon that we could go see. 
This bridge was in Daedunsan National Park, and was one of the things that my friend Sarah really wanted to do while she was here visiting, but with the schedule that we had, it didn't work out to. 

After the time it took to get there, it was confirmed that we wouldn't of had time...That being said I still wish that Sarah had been there this time!

It was a rainy, cold day but after the effort we took to get there, we were not about to turn around and go back!

Getting there:

We took a KTX train from Seoul Station to Daejeon Station. From this station we took a taxi to Seobu Intercity Bus Terminal, which was about 6,000- 7,000 won.

At this station we were able to catch the #34 bus to Daedunsan. It was about a 50-60 min. journey on this bus to the last stop- the mountain. Unfortunately, it dropped us off a bit from the start of the trail/ cable car, so we had to walk about 20 minutes in the rain along the road to get there. Below is a picture I took of the bus stop sign and the times for the buses.

Once we got to the mountain, we hiked up a bit to get to the cable car. We thought that since it was cold and raining, that the Koreans would stay home and not be out hiking. We were wrong though because many tour buses go to the mountains during this time of year, and they take loads of people. I imagine that these people had a tour booked and wanted to get there money out of it, so they were in rain parkas and carrying umbrellas like us!
We got to the cable car ticket line, and found out that the earliest we could go up with almost 2 hours later. Again, I'm assuming that these tour buses pre-booked cable car tickets, so were forced to wait to go up the mountain.
When it was our turn we went up, and started our hike. I had read that it was about 1 1/2 hours or so to get to the bridges and back, but it ended up being faster than that. 
I'm sure that on a beautiful day in the fall that it is packed full of people who are just butt to butt going up the stairs, it might actually take that long. Fortunately we were able to avoid that because of the rain. We made it to the top and back down in almost 30-45 min. 
Be prepared- the hike is basically all steps. You go pretty much straight up from the cable car to the bridges via metal steps. I'm sure the view out is amazing, but we weren't really able to see it...
We made it to the bridge after a 10-15 min. stair climb. In the original picture that Sarah showed me, the bridge used to be a rope bridge. Now it is a metal bridge, which is a lot let spectacular and daring, but there still was a slight sway as you walked on it...

Shortly after the bridge there is a stair bridge to climb as well. It was pretty narrow and again: I'm sure on a clear day the view would be amazing! I still enjoyed seeing it in the rain.
It was an interesting hike that was different that any hike I had done in Korea or elsewhere for that matter. 

As we were almost back down to the cable car, the sky started to open up... We then learned we had made a mistake that we were not aware of before. At the bottom of the mountain we bought round trip cable car tickets because we had limited time. As we got to the cable car, we didn't see much of a line to get down so we didn't think it would be a problem to get down. 
After our hike, we realized that we had to get a lift ticket with a time, and the time we were given was  a 2 hour wait. It was already 4:30, and we knew that we had many legs of a journey to complete before we could get home. Emily was worried that if she missed her train that she had booked, that it would be very difficult to make it home until very late.
I don't use the foreigner card much, but we were able to convince the cable car operator to sneak us on so we could get down the mountain. 
We had no idea what the returning bus schedule was, but we knew it was every hour or so. We tried to get back to the bus stop as soon as we could, so we took a taxi up the road instead of walking 30 min. to get to the bus stop.
We we got to the bus stop we found this bus schedule. The column on the right are the buses that leave from the mountain. We were able to get back to Daejeon and take another taxi to the Train Station from the bus station so Emily could get her train to Busan. Ben and I waited on the others to get down from the mountain and we all took a KTX back to Daegu together.
I'm glad that we went on this hike, but it was a very long day, so to go to this mountain, you really need to budget the entire day.
Here is a look into our day...

• subway/metro 30 min.
• KTX train- 1 hour.
• Taxi to Bus Station 20 min.
• Bus to Daedunsan- 1 hour.
• Hike to Cable Car- 30 min.
• Wait for Cable car- 2 hours.
• cable car- 7 min.
• Hike to bridge & back- 1 hour.
• wait for cable car- 1 1/2 hour.
• taxi to bus stop- 10 min.
• Bus back to Daejeon- 1 hour
• Taxi to Daejeon- 20 min.
• KTX back to Daegu- 1 hour.
• taxi to our house- 20 min.

(Obviously there is a ton of wait time between these things)

To reiterate: Buy your cable car tickets as soon as you get to the mountain, and when you get to the top, budget how much time you think it will take and try to get the ticket to go down before you hike up to the bridge.