Two routes, two counties
The mountain straddles Jecheon and Danyang, and each side has one official route to the 1,016 m summit.
Sanghak, on the Danyang side, is 2.7 km in 1 hour 30 minutes, past an old temple site and the Namgeunseok park. Sangcheon, from Baegundong in Jecheon, is 3.8 km in 2 hours 30, by the Yongdam falls junction.
Both are one-way climbs, and on both the section figures add to the published totals exactly.
What the park says about the ground
On Sangcheon: gradient of roughly 40 to 60 degrees, around 60 approaching the summit, an area where rockfall occurs frequently, and crampons and gaiters in winter.
On Sanghak: the difficulty is not high overall, but because of the nature of the rock you should watch for rockfall and slipping — and it names ankle fractures.
We grade Sanghak hard and Sangcheon at our top level. The park puts them a step apart on its own scale too, which is the same reading.
There are warning boards on the ground as well. A visitor reported in 2025 that two of them above the Sangcheon car park read CAUTION SILP HAZARD, and the office said it would fix the spelling. The hazard is real even if the sign was not proofread.
The tick notice
Both Geumsusan route pages carry a warning about tick-borne disease — severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome, Lyme disease, scrub typhus.
It is not boilerplate. The neighbouring mountains in the same park do not carry it, so somebody decided it belonged here. Cover your legs, stay on the path, and check yourself when you get down.
Stay on the two routes
The Soyongarong ridge runs up to the left of Mangdeokbong and looks like a third option. The park has assessed it as lying outside the national park boundary, and says that entering park land by that route incurs a fine.
Bivouacking and night walking are both prohibited here — the office has stated so directly.
There is also an older loose end worth knowing about. A 2013 park table listed Sangcheon-ri to Mangdeokbong to Geumsusan, 3.4 km, among six closed spring sections under the Natural Parks Act. That is a different line from either route on this page, and no current notice says whether the closure still stands. If you were planning to go over Mangdeokbong, check first.
Open in the fire season — with the usual caveat
The park office confirms that the Sanghak to Geumsusan section is not among the trails closed for the fire season, so it can be walked. Woraksan’s park-wide spring closure covers three sections from 3 March to 30 April and none of them is on this mountain.
Check the current park notice before you go; the closure dates above are historical and should not be treated as the current schedule.
The gate closes at one
Four control points serve this mountain and Doraksan between them. Through the winter half of the year you may enter from 05:00 and the gate shuts at 13:00; from April to October the window is 04:00 to 14:00.
The Sangcheon course text mentions a round trip of five to six hours or more. Put that against a one o’clock winter cut-off and the day plans itself: start at first light or do not start.
Parking and the return journey
Parking. Neither trailhead has a national park car park. The Sangcheon rest area and its car park sit on state land that Jecheon leases to the village residents’ association, who run it commercially — an enquiry from 2014 recorded 3,000 won for a car, which is too old to use as a current price. For Sanghak, confirm the current operator and parking rate before you go. The park notes that the Sanghak car park is the last toilet on that route, and that many people drive on to a private resort beyond it.
And the return journey. Neither route publishes a round-trip distance. Sanghak mentions coming back the same way without a figure; Sangcheon mentions five to six hours without one. No round-trip figure is published, so allow for the return yourself.
One smaller mismatch: the signpost at the Sangcheon rest area says 3.5 km to the summit where the park record says 3.8.
A warning about the travel directions
The park’s own travel information for Geumsusan is wrong, on both routes. The Sanghak entry directs you to Deoksan; the Sangcheon entry directs you to the Sangseonam visitor centre, which is the trailhead for Doraksan, a different mountain.
Do not follow that address. Navigate to 1151 Sang-ri, Jeokseong-myeon for Sanghak, or 772 Sangcheon-ri, Susan-myeon for Sangcheon — both come from the park office.
How to take it
Sanghak if you want the summit in ninety minutes of climbing and a shorter day. Sangcheon if you want the falls and the steep ground, and can be on the trail early.
Either way: stay on the marked route, keep off Soyongarong, and treat the degree figures as the park meant them.