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On a coastal climb, an unexpected accompanimentDaniel Kojetin recounts meeting a music-playing monk on the cliffs around Oedolgae |
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| ▲ Photos by Daniel Kojetin |
“Don’t go that way!”
I’m pretty sure that’s what the monk said as we were walking along the edge of the cliff face, trying to find the easiest way down. I had an old printout of the routes that had been hanging on my bulletin board for two years and was sure the path was this way. However, when you change your perspective, the trail becomes unintelligible in the jumble of rocks, and there’s no way in sight.
“It’s gotta be this way,” I told my rock climbing companions, Darren and Christine. I was just climbing here the week before but skipped the walk down and went for the safer, rope assisted rappel. “Why didn’t I go that way then?!” This was all I could think as we scrambled and jumped down the rocks from the top of the cliff to the water.
I’ve had plenty of experience climbing all around the world. I climbed the desert towers in Utah, and the granite walls of Yosemite, fjords in New Zealand, and the limestone karst formations in China. I don’t know why, but there’s something about climbing over the ocean that’s different. It scares me. The climbs are relatively short, but there’s still the feeling that there is nothing below you.
Although at any time there are a thousand tourists 20 meters above you, the sense of adventure still exists, and you feel on your own. For some reason, with all my years of climbing with Darren and Christine on this small island, we’ve never been to Oedolgae together.
Oedolgae is one of the most popular destinations for tourists in Jeju. Its natural beauty makes it one of the most well-known destinations in Korea and attracts endless numbers of domestic and international tourists every year. Oedolgae itself is a sea stack, a freestanding column of rock jutting out of the ocean on the south side of the island near Seogwipo City. On a fine day, the water is crystal clear, and the view not only includes Oedolgae, but the impressive islands of Seopseom and Beomseom in the distance.
“Don’t do it!” The monk screamed from the top as we were about to start our first climb. It always gives me a little chuckle when non-climbers fear for our safety.
The climbing though turned out to be spectacular. The rock is solid and the holds are positive. The first climb we tried went straight up the cliff face. On the easy climbing down low, protection was scarce. If you fell, you felt like you might fall down to the ledge and maybe even bounce to the crashing waves below. The climb wound its way through the surprisingly strong volcanic basalt and up to a corner crack with only a few small hand and footholds to finish off at the bolt anchors.
“What’s he doing?” I said to Christine as she was securing Darren. The monk was coming down. However, he wasn’t careful moving from hold to hold. He was leaping from rock to rock.
Every jump was precarious. He would go one way, get stuck, backtrack and try another way. Now I realized the fear he must have felt when he watched us pick our way down the path. He looked like a local, but I wonder if he’d ever been this way before. He scared me even more because he also didn’t have his hands free, he was carrying a four-foot-long piece of bamboo. In fact it was an instrument, a daegum, a traditional Korean bamboo flute.
“I think he’s coming to serenade us,” I told my friends.
Darren had finished that climb, and we were on to the next one, a difficult face climb with small edges for holds when the monk finally reached us. It seems now that he understood what we were doing and gave us some support. He said that he comes down to Oedolgae everyday, but I wonder if it’s the first time he’s been to the bottom of the cliff. He did serenade us, and after a beautiful rendition of the most famous of all traditional Korean songs, Arirang, he bid us farewell and gave a friendly warning to be careful of the rogue waves.
I think he took a bit of the edge off from the day and some weeks later, I asked Christine what she thought about the climbing at Oedolgae. She replied, “It was something different, it was an adventure.”
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ⓒ Jeju Weekly 2009 (http://www.jejuweekly.net)
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Copyright ⓒ 2009 All materials on this site are protected under the Korean Copyright Law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published
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