Ski Trip!

The area by the cabins 

Fresh powder in the morning!

With some new friends at the waterpark

Some of our group on top of the mountain

Last weekend was the Lunar New Year, which is of course, a big deal in Asian countries.  For the holiday, we had both Monday and Tuesday off of work - our last long weekend in Korea!  We were thinking about what to do and at the last minute decided to go on a ski trip.  It was organized by a tour group called Adventure Korea (they cater to foreigners living in Korea and organize lots of ski trips, hiking trips, etc.) and about 80 westerners went on the trip.  Our friend, Kelly (who we met in China), was going and invited us to tag along.

We left Saturday morning and spent two nights at the Phoenix Park ski area and one at some cabins in the mountains.  The ski area was fairly small but  had some decent runs.  The great thing about it was that it was empty!  The Lunar New Year is a family deal, so most Koreans stay at home rather than doing things like going skiing.  It was great to get up boarding here, even though it was really cold, windy and snowing the the runs were icy.  Because of all of that, I didn't last as long as I normally would have.  Oh, and we got to do night skiing, which I have never done before.  Our passes were only valid until 10:30pm, but the skiing goes all the way until 4am.  

The best part of the trip was all the great people that we met.  We stayed in a hostel (which was right on the mountain.  Have you ever seen a hostel that you could ski out the back door to the gondola?) and had to share a room with about 5 other people.  Fortunately, the people we ended up rooming with were awesome and we spent the whole weekend with them. Two more people joined our room in our cabin and they were just as great.  We all had a ton of fun together just hanging out and laughing all night.  

It was a great trip and I'l glad that it will serve as one of the last memories of what we did in Korea.  

Photos.