DCSki Forums

skiobsessed

February 7, 2018

Member since 03/10/2008 🔗

80 posts

My girlfriend and I had the awesome opportunity to ski in South Korea last winter during our trip to Asia in 2016. I have a knack for finding a way to sneak in a ski trip whenever I travel internationally, even if it's for a day or two, much to the chargin of my non-skiing travel companions. With the Winter Olympics heating up, I wanted to share this unique experience with the good people at DCSki, even if the trip is over a year ago!

First, the language barrier was pretty apparent as most of the people we tried talking did not speak or understand much English, and we spoke no Korean. However, there is usually at least one person on duty that had a decent command of the English language to make it functional for tourists. We wasted no time as we took a 3-hour bus shuttle to Alpensia Resort the second we landed at Incheon Airport.

Shuttle Bus website:

http://www.tourtokorea.com/bus-2/

The round trip cost about $110.00 for 2 adults. The ride was comfortable and wasn't crowded at all when we boarded our 7:30 pm shuttle. Apparently, early December is far from prime season as there were only 5 people, including us, on the bus.

We stayed at the Intercontinental at Alpensia:

https://www.ihg.com/intercontinental/hotels/us/en/gangwon-do/kagha/hoteldetail

Since we were staying during their down season, we were able to get a decent room for two nights totaling 213,000 KRW (South Korean Won). It comes to roughly $100 USD a night, which I thought was a steal! Where else in the world can you stay at a slopeside hotel for that price? Oh, since it wasn’t busy at all, they upgraded us to a suite that was easily bigger and more luxurious than the apartment we were renting in the States. Score!

Another note about the hotel, the breakfast buffet, though expensive, is well worth the price. They had a great mixture of sausage, bacon, omelets, eggs, and hash browns with traditional Korean fare like kimchi, rice, and even bulgogi (Korean bbq meat). This would fill us up in the morning so we wouldn’t have to stop for a full lunch.

Since it was early December, they didn’t have a lot of open trails at Alpensia so we went to neighboring YongPyong. Although it is about 5 minutes away, they don’t have courtesy shuttles linking the resorts so you’ll have to get a taxi for roughly $10.00 USD each way).

A couple of noticeable differences between skiing in South Korea and the States:

The liftees NEVER let a chair hit you. They bow when you are in the loading area, they slow down their chair with their full body weight, and they wave you off as you get on the lift. In the event that you fall, they run to pick up your gear and even lift you up. Really nice and genuine people.
They have a station at the base of the lifts where you can use air-powered guns to blow the snow off your skis and snowboard. It gets really loud, but provide another way of preventing rust on your equipment.
Food ”“ they have the typical American fare with coffee, sweets, hot dogs and hamburgers, but also provide Japanese ramen and tempura as lunch options as well.
Another tip ”“ the Korean tourist website offers discounted lift tickets and ski rentals. We didn’t know about it on the first day, but we took advantage of it on our second day there.

Best of all, my girlfriend loved the skiing there and is now more inclined to go on more ski trips in the future!