Freezing Fun in Hwacheon

Good luck kiss from the Sancheoneo (Mountain Trout).

One cold January weekend, my mom, dad, our friend Steve, and I bundled up for an ice festival in Hwacheon, which is in northern Gangwon province. It is high in the mountains and close to the DMZ. We drove through many towns and mountains that were beautiful. Then we finally arrived. We thought we were early because there was no one around. We found out later that it was canceled, but we made the best of it. As we explored we found a frozen river with some people playing on it. We found a place where we could borrow a sled that had a rope attached to it so someone can pull you. You could also borrow ice picks so that you can push yourself along the ice (I liked pushing myself but my mommy was too scared to let me, she was afraid I would poke my eye out… *sign* Moms).  I had a great time playing and sledding on the river. Check out the video below of some of my cool sliding.



Then we checked out the surrounding area. Along the river there were ice sculptures that were bigger than a small house. My mommy took pictures of daddy and me as we climbed all over them. Climbing on them was so fun and scary. I almost gave my dad a heart attack. The ice was freezing cold too! 

They don't look that big from here, but these were about 2 stories tall

I look so small next to these snow sculptures.

On the nose of one of the characters

The next thing we did was go inside a big snow fort. The first thing we saw in the fort was a bunch of different colored lights in a long tunnel made of ice. It looked really beautiful and was really fun walking through an ice rainbow tunnel. 

The big snow fort with the cool lit up ice tunnel inside

Inside the ice tunnel

Later, we left the river and found an ice sculpture park. When we walked in the first big room we saw a beautiful walkway that was decorated in color changing lights. There were lights everywhere and they were all changing and flashing in cool patterns. It was like a neon winter wonderland. We stayed in there for a while because it was so neat.

The weird but cool neon, light up room

Then we walked through that cool looking room and then out into the courtyard. The courtyard had many ice sculptures that were as big as a living room. Some I liked were: a Smurf house, a boy and girl getting married, a humongous cake, a pea pod, and a giant frozen water mill.

The smurf house, cake, water mill.

The enormous frozen water mill

I enjoyed the day, however I would have liked to do the other activates this festival usually offers. Since the festival was canceled I wasn’t able to do the sledding down big hills, ice fishing with my bare hands, or eat some of the special mountain trout that live in the river in that area. Hopefully next year the festival will be in full swing and I will be able to do all the extra fun stuff.

Click me for more info on the Hwacheon Sancheoneo (Mountain Trout) Ice Festival