It was 725 metres high. It sounds a lot more impressive if you say 2400 feet

I was so excited to be going up a mountain. I remembered scaling mountains as a child, jumping from rocks and shimmying down poles as being fantastic fun. I'd run circles around my parents and their friends, both literally and figuratively, in the awesome atmosphere of a winter mountain.

Goddamn it, I must have been an annoyingly exuberant child. Climbing mountains is hard as shit.

Seriously, when we started walking up the mountain I thought "man, it's not going to be this steep the whole way is it?", considering how steep the incline was. Then the paved bit ended, and we were going up rough wooden steps. Then rough stone steps. Then just... goddamn rocks. And then we were having to climb freakin boulders with the help of a handrail. Or navigate around boulders with a rope. Or just have to magic ourselves around really difficult situations.

After 3 hours of that bullshit, we get to the top, and there's... what? a rock?

It was awesome.

My dads friend is part of a big rock-climbing group called "Blue Mountain". None of them really know why it was named that, but they want to make a trip to Sydney and see them one day. They're are all super-pros at climbing mountains, considering that they climb these giant difficult things at least once or twice a month. My dad's friend reckoned that he'd climbed 200 in his life, some outside Korea like Mt Fuji.

But the pro's decided it was too dangerous to bother going up to the top of the mountain today, and opted to go to a valley behind it instead. My dad's friend decided that if we had come from Australia to climb the mountain, then we were damn well seeing the top.

It was so goddamn scary grappling over rockfaces with only a hand rail and unsure footing to rely on. When I looked down, it dropped right down to ground level. The 18 storey high deathboxes looked like the toys of ants. My dad has sadistic friends.

The thing about describing this is that all the pro's are so difficult to pin down, while the con's are numerous. There's something special about putting yourself through toil for leisure by climbing mountains. There's pain there, to be sure, but if you revel in it, it gives you time to reflect on yourself. It's a testing of your limits, your confidence and your trust in your own body.
Like I said, it's hard to describe. There's also the scenery, which is just as hard to describe. The photos do it no justice at all, but are beautiful nontheless. I guess it seems more beautiful when you've had to earn it inch by inch, and have it hit you when you finally look up from the ground.

Meanwhile, the grandpas who do this regularly have a ball, looking happy to be bounding from rock to rock, even taking photos with Mia and singing as they toil their way down. There's a saying in Korea, there are no bad men amongst those who climb mountains, and it's persuasive. They all seem so calm and peaceful. Good bunch, the lot of them.

That was my deep, insightful mountain climbing experience. I hope you're all well.