Category: food

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Jeju Olle hike, Korea day 5

#Jeju #JejuOlle

trip report by site editor Rick McCharles

Day 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |

Day 4 had been long long, over 30km. In the dark I lucked into finding a perfect tent site, hidden away in a rock niche high above the coast.

Route 5-6 - Jeju Olle, Korea

It had previously been used as a meditation retreat.

Route 5-6 - Jeju Olle, Korea

Dawn is the most peaceful time of the day. They are not early risers on Jeju.

Route 5-6 - Jeju Olle, Korea

Locals live by the “Sam Mu” (“Three Nothings”) – no beggars, no thieves, no gates.

Route 5-6 - Jeju Olle, Korea

Here is (by far) my favourite restaurant over 100km – the Two Weeks Coffee Shop.

Two Weeks Coffee Shop

The owner retired from Seoul. Because he and his wife love coffee, they purchased the property to set up a retirement job.

Two Weeks Coffee Shop - bicycle construct

Every Korean can guess why it’s named Two Weeks. … You’ll have to go yourself and ask if you want to know. Bring a book and a laptop. They have free WiFi. You can hang out in their lovely garden.

Two Weeks Coffee Shop

Check the vista from atop the nearby cinder cone.

vista from Two Weeks Coffee Shop

Known as an “oreum” (lateral volcano grown over as a hill or small mountain), the Jeju Olle never bypasses one without making you climb to the top.

Route 5-6 - Jeju Olle, Korea

That’s the second largest “city” on Jeju, Seogwipo.

Route 5-6 - Jeju Olle, Korea

They have the same huge, colourful web spiders I’ve bumped into many times in Hong Kong.

Route 5-6 - Jeju Olle, Korea

I imagine these small, timid feral cats eat the spiders, when they can.

Route 5-6 - Jeju Olle, Korea

I finished at the official Jeju Olle office in Seogwipo, a bit disappointed that I ran out of time to do route 7. Some feel that’s the best of all.

Read more about route 6 on the official website.

See the rest of my route 5-6 photos on flickr.

Day 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |

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Resources if you want to plan a trip for yourself:

Visit Korea – Jeju Olle (also available in many other languages)

JejuOlle.org (also in Japanese, Chinese and Korean)

Wild Junket – Hiking in Korea: Jeju Olle Trail

Though I did not use it, there is a guidebook in English. Look for it on the island or check it out as a PDF linked from this Visit Korea page.

Questions? Suggestions? … Leave a comment.

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my BearVault is stuck

I love my clear plexiglass BearVault, happy to carry the extra weight for the convenience of tossing my food anywhere I like.

But if I tighten the lid enough for the simple plastic clip to “click”, it can be tough to open. Sometimes I need strip down, call on super human strength, and sit on the thing to squish it a little bit oblong.

Turns out that’s normal for this gear. Check this rant from thruhiker Crow:

It was 4am and I was lying in my frosty tent in the Sierras, thinking how splendid a hot beverage would be right now. I was hungry as I hadn’t eaten dinner the night before because I was low on food and one of the ways I ration my food is to skip dinner.

I was thinking: for the same weight as the bear canister I could have brought my stove, pot, fuel canister, and 5 snicker bars. Right now, I could be drinking a hot beverage and eating a snicker bar. That would be good, but instead I have a bear canister.

I reached out of my tent, grabbed my frosty bear canister, tried to open it—it didn’t budge. I straddled it and tried to open it, it wouldn’t turn a bit–it was completely locked up. And that is when I renamed my BearVault 450 bear canister: my “G…

read more – Gear review: BearVault 450 bear canister

I too leave mine as threaded as possible, but not quite locked.

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KFC – Quadruple Down sandwich

I couldn’t resist.

… two thick and juicy boneless white meat chicken filets (Original Recipe® or Grilled), two pieces of bacon, two melted slices of Monterey Jack and pepper jack cheese and Colonel’s Sauce. …

It’s as disgustingly delicious as it looks!

… the sodium content is high — a whopping 1,380 milligrams — more than a half-teaspoon’s worth of salt. For comparison’s sake, the American Heart Association recommends people eat less than 1,500 mg of sodium in an entire day.

Considering the rising consciousness on healthy eating — from rules that will require calorie counts on menus nationwide to Jamie Oliver teaching kids in West Virginia to make better food choices — it was pretty gutsy of KFC to market a product that sandwiches bacon and mayo-based sauce between two pieces of fried chicken.

Still, KFC’s new creation might surprise you a little on the nutritional front. At 540 calories, the Double Down, though not exactly a dieting food, is 90 calories lighter than McDonald’s Premium Crispy Chicken Club Sandwich. …

NPR – The Nutritional Lowdown On KFC’s Double Down


UPDATE – Is it really 540 calories? Or more like 1190 calories?

This crime against humanity will not be sold in Canada. America’s rank as the most obese major nation is safe, for now.

And just in case Wendy’s wants to challenge, KFC has this “sandwich” in the lab …

(via This is why you’re Fat)

You could eat one Quadruple Down, … then set out hiking for the weekend without needing to carry any more food.

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the “PCT Method” – hanging a bear bag

Affectionately known by the lightweight hiking underground as the “PCT Method” (presumably because it was first used by long distance hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail), a bear bag hanging method exists that is lighter, requires less rope, offers the benefits of counterbalancing, is easier to set up, and offers simple and quick hanging and retrieval of your food.

Click PLAY or watch and comment on TheBackpacker.tv.

You can make your own system quite easily by assembling the following components:

* Food storage bag
* 40 feet of hanging rope
* Keychain carabiner
* Small stuff sack for a rock (”rock sack”)
* Pencil-sized twig about 4-6 inches long.

I particularly like the second option shown by Bryan DeLay. Many’s the time I’ve needed that in the past.

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naked chef wins $100k TED prize

I’ve not been a fan of controversial British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver.

I find him strident. And not all that amusing.

But I’m thrilled he won the prestigious TED prize for 2010.

At the heart of Oliver’s work is an assault on the obesity epidemic: The CDC states that one in four Americans are considered obese. It is estimated that 43 percent of Americans, or 103 million people, will be obese by 2018. The cost of this epidemic is anticipated to reach $344 billion per year. It currently accounts for almost 10 percent of the yearly US health care costs, and that rate will rise to 21 percent by 2018. WHO’s latest projections indicate that, globally in 2005, approximately 1.6 billion adults were overweight and projects that by 2015, that figure will rise to 2.3 billion.” …

2010 TED Prize goes to Jamie Oliver

God knows he’s passionate. If interested, click over to TED to watch his scary 18min presentation.

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Perky Jerky

Kate feels this disgusting product is just the thing to give a tired hiker a kick in the pants.

Perky Jerky is the world’s first all-natural performance enhancing meat snack. Put simply, we’ve combined the most tender and flavorful beef jerky, with an extra dose of energy (caffeine, from the Guarana we add) to provide a jerky experience you won’t find anywhere else.

Perky Jerky

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Everest trek – day 6

Trip report by site editor Rick McCharles.

Just before dark, the previous evening, I found a perfect tent site by a waterfall just above this bridge.

Wild camping is not illegal in the National Park. But it’s best to be discrete.

Feeling good, I decided to climb all the way to Dingboche at about 4,530m (14,800 ft). Likely I’d need a rest day there doing one or the other of a couple of different side trip options.

Ama Dablam began to loom large.

The trees were gone. Increasingly the scenery became bleaker.

Though nobody ever seemed to mention it, we were disappointed with the weather. In November it should be sunny, clear and cold.

I was psyched, however, upon reaching Dingboche, a memorable village. This is the jumping off point for the excellent Island Peak climb, by far the most popular of the trekking peaks.

The biggest change I found from my last trip to Nepal 11ys ago is mobile phones. All guides and lodges have them. Some European hikers had phones. And phones seem to work almost anywhere.

At first put off by telephone contact in the “wilderness”, I quickly realized what a life saver they must be. Literally. Lives have been saved, I’m sure, by communication.

The second biggest change is that internet has arrived over the past few years. Here is the highest internet cafe in the world.

Actually it was the highest in the world. The owner recently put one laptop and a connection at Gorak Shep 5,164m, right on the doorstep of Mt. Everest.

I took every opportunity to post online my exact whereabouts, as a safety precaution.

Here are the Yaks coming home to my Guest House after a day of grazing barren hills late in the season. I ate much better than the Yaks that day. In fact, I took the ultimate Himalayan culinary challenge … I ordered Yak steak. (Eating meat is strongly discouraged by every guidebook.)

I turned out to be fine. … But I never ordered meat again for the rest of the trip.

all photos from day 6

… on to day 7

days: 1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12-13|14|15|16|17| info page

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pack it out? … to where?

So said Sir Edmund Hillary in Nepal.

Any hiker carrying their trash back from the Himalaya to Kathmandu is making a mistake. The capital of Nepal has a worse trash disposal system than either Namche Bazaar or Lukla, in the mountains.

New Road, Kathmandu

Should we carry trash all the back to our home nation? … Think of the carbon footprint.

As far as I’m concerned, in Nepal it’s best to burn paper in the mountains. Shatter glass into a remote waterfall. Bury metal under a pile of stones.

I did the same in the Andes.

This all contradicts the dictates of the Nepali National Parks.

Leave a comment if you have a contrary opinion.

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expensive European hiking gear

Before I traveled in Europe, I vaguely thought of their gear as … nice. Way overpriced. Gaudy. And sometimes completely goofy. (Especially the tents.)

Then I toured the huge Sportler store in Bolzano, Italy.

Later I was overwhelmed with the even bigger Schuster store in Munich.

Brands like Salewa, Kaikkaalla, Meru, La Sportiva, Mammut, Vaude, Deuter, Hilleberg, Vango, And more appealed. Quality is generally very high.

Mammut-t-shirt

Also more familiar brands: The North Face, Salomon, Mountain Hardware, MSR, Primus, Therm-a-rest, Marmot, Arc’teryx.

Arc’teryx? How has that Canadian company become so HUGE worldwide? What a success story. They fit right in with the expensive European brands.

Actually, Arc’teryx was bought by Adidas in 2001. Then sold to Amer Sports of Finland in 2005. It’s a multi-national now.

My advice to every European hiker coming to North America: Buy your gear in Canada from Mountain Equipment Co-op. Or check prices on Amazon.com and comparison shop in the USA.

Europeans will get sometimes twices the value for their Euro currency in North America as compared with European prices. Especially on American brands.

My CAD Mountain Hardware Scrambler daypack is always CAD$50 back home. In Europe it’s normally €55. That’s CAD$86.40.

An MSR Hubba tent on Amazon.com is US$250 . At Schuster in Munich it’s €329.95 (US$468.14)

Yet there’s some gear available in Europe that I can’t get at home.

Want to take a Cheeseburger in a can hiking? They are available widely in Germany.

cheeseburger-in-a-can

Taste Test: Cheeseburger In A Can