chang bai shan

On Saturday, we took a trip to a mountain that's about four hours away. In Korean, it's called Bek Du San and in Chinese it's called Chang Bai Shan. It's half in China and half in North Korea. We were told to take the warmest clothes we had. I didn't take the warmest clothes I had because I brought clothes for the Siberia type weather that they have in the winter here. So, I dressed in a few layers and was pretty comfortable, even at the top of the mountain, except for the fact that I was drenched from the constant drizzle on the hike up. Anyhow, for the first part, we took jeeps up to the top of a mountain and then scrambled up a gravel slope to get to the peak. There is supposed to be a magnificent view of the lake from up there, but we couldn't see more than about five feet in front of us. It was kind of a mysterious feeling about it, but of course we were a little disappointed. We took the jeeps back down, then went to another place where we climbed more than 1,000 steps to get to the same lake that we should have been able to see from the top. It was really hard, but it was totally worth it. The lake was absolutely beautiful.