The Jisan Forest Resort, which opened in December 1996, makes for the perfect one-day trip from Seoul. It is located only forty minutes from the capital and is covered with beautiful white pines.

Furthermore, Icheon ceramics complex is a mere 15 minutes away, offering a variety of sights to see and ceramicware experience programs to enjoy. Everland Amusement park and a hot springs complex are also located very close by.

As with all the hills in the immediate vicinity of Seoul, Jisan Forest Resort features a small ski area with impressive base facilities and a large hotel/condo development, plus the attached golf course which is so common in Korea. Jisan Forest is also the site of Korea’s most famous rock music festival, Valley Rock.

The terrain at Jisan Forest Resort is, to be frank, very uninspiring; the ski slopes are essentially just swathes of the hillside from which the trees have been cleared, resulting in mostly wide open pistes which are great for beginners but not offering anything interesting to advanced riders. A total of 5 chairlifts give access to two top stations, with a few choices of descent from each, effectively giving you a handful of (very short) options; needless to say, if you can already ride you’ll exhaust these in an hour or so and will really need to be into riding park for Jisan to be worthwhile. Jisan Forest Resort does cater for this quite well, and it has the best terrain park found anywhere in Korea outside the larger Gangwon-do resorts:

For those learning or pushing on to intermediate, the terrain at Jisan is actually ideal, with gentle gradients and wide open slopes lower down, and some steeper sections to progress to at the top. For advanced riders, the terrain park is located on the lower part of the main piste; it’s a decent effort for such a small hill, with a row of medium to large kickers and various jib features usually set up, though unfortunately, it doesn’t have its own chair so you have to lap the whole run each time (not that that takes very long).

Source: Jisan Ski Resort, KTO, Snow Guide Korea

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