Seoraksan crowns the Taebaek Mountains with a crest of needle-sharp granite spires, the most dramatic rock scenery in South Korea. More than thirty peaks here climb above 1,200 metres, and what erosion has left of the granite is a landscape of colossal monoliths and knife-edge ridges. Wind-bent pines grow straight out of cracks in the cliff faces. The range rises directly from the coastal city of Sokcho, close enough that a single day can hold a swim in the East Sea and a climb into high alpine rock. In 1982 it became Korea's first UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, and the animals that hold on along those bare ridges are the reason. One boulder on the massif, Ulsanbawi, carries a story about arriving late to a mountain that was already finished.
Seoraksan's real fame arrives each October, when its maple and oak slopes turn to sheets of crimson, orange and gold and much of the country drives east for danpung, the autumn-colour pilgrimage. From the main gate you pass Sinheungsa, a temple that claims a very long history indeed, and then the trails fan out. Roughly 800 steel steps climb the six peaks of Ulsanbawi, 873 metres of sheer rock. Clear streams thread the boulder-strewn Cheonbuldong Valley to waterfalls dropping into green pools. A cable car lifts less-hurried visitors to the ridge fortress of Gwongeumseong. The whole massif is strictly protected, busiest on autumn weekends and quiet under winter snow, when the same granite turns silver-grey and the valleys freeze into ice.