With the Chinese New Year break, I had a lot of free time and was determined to make the most of that. I chose to do a hike on Wednesday, right in the middle of the week giving ample rest time between walks. I still don’t think I’m anywhere near my peak, which was doing 200 miles in 10 days back when I was 17.

I’d heard about Meiling Scenic Area a while ago but for whatever reason, never made it over there. The idea of Meiling re-emerged when searching for walks and when I joined the ‘Southern Taiwan Hiking’ Facebook group, some of their members did a walk around Meiling. This sealed the deal and I was set for another 5am alarm.

I left the house and I intended to catch the 6:11am Green Mainline bus to Yujing in Yongkang as it made its way east out of Tainan City. The cycle up Tainan’s ring road took a lot less time than expected and ended up waiting 20 minutes! Worryingly, there was a lot of fog in the Zuozhen area but it cleared before I got Yujing.

At Yujing it was a 5-minute connection for the Green 22 to Meiling, the journey took 40 minutes and the mountain scenery around was absolutely stunning in the morning sun. And so to the hike itself…

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I expected things to be easy, find the trail then just get on with it. The catch was, the map was totally in Chinese and getting onto Guanyin Trail wasn’t straight forward. I headed right at the T-Junction from the bus stop, then uphill. The next signpost for ‘Guanyin Trail’ directed me right, through a restaurant. Naturally, I was a bit sceptical but a local assured me it was correct!

I learnt the best thing to do was just head up, even when the path split and this wasn’t the only frustration, it was the terrain. It was effectively a march up endless cement steps but as I looked back the views were absolutely delightful so it made up for the poor quality walk.

At the top of the trail, I found out I was on the ridge that separates Nanxi and Nanhua districts in Tainan. I turned left to the viewing point and I could see Dadongshan, and over to the right, Tsengwen Reservoir in Chiayi County.

I backtracked and went along the ridge to reach the peak of ‘Zhuzijianshan’ at 1109m, one route went down the ridge and presumably back up again which again, I was sceptical about. There was also a shortcut, going up through the trees which is what I chose to do.

The views from the top this time were eastwards, down across Nanhua district and looking into Jiaxian district of Kaohsiung City in the distance. It was endless mountains, I just couldn’t help but wonder just how many 1000m+ peaks there in Taiwan.

I went back to the ridge and continued for about 20 minutes, before turning off for Meifeng, literally translated as Plum Peak. There wasn’t much of a view from there, so after a short rest, carried on and headed for Yixiantian trail.

The track split in three about 1km from the bottom of Meifeng, and only a badly placed sign, showed me Yixiantian trail was 1km on the right hand track. I say track, from the bottom it was effectively a road and it descended quite steeply. In all honesty, aside from the views, the walking had been pretty uninspiring up to this point.

I got going on Yixiantian, and things changed. The trail started with a short uphill then turned into a system of ropes, planks necessitating a few scrambles. My walking poles were effectively redundant on this section and having gone in my bag kept snagging against the ropes.

I reached Falcon Peak after 20 minutes, which was a huge mass of rocks and between two of the rocks, was a crack, Yixiantian crack. It looked like the end of the trail, and I had a walk around, expecting to have to have to turn back. I looked and there was a ladder down the crack in the rocks so began a long descent to the bottom, on my bottom!

Disappointingly, it was a dead end and I had to reascend. I almost started the walk back, when I saw a path to the right of Falcon Peak and the trail continued!

The trail descended and I was beginning to wonder where on earth I was going to end up. Eventually, it started to ascend again with a rope climb involved up a rock face, no steps, just a rope and it certainly set the trail apart from anything I’d done in previous walks.

The trail fizzled out, and there was a sign for Meiling directing me back up the hill to where the trail started. From there, it was a long ascent back to the split in the paths and I decided to check out what secrets they were hiding.

It turned out the left path was a total dead end and the centre one led in the direction of two other peaks. Signage in both Chinese and English was non-existent and I called it a day.

I got to the top of Wulong Trail and began the descent back towards the bus stop. Wulong Trail was a total let down, and the remaining 3km of the walk was along a steep, tarmac road, calling it a trail borders on absurd.

40 minutes of uneventful descent later and the hike was done. Aside from the views and Yixiantian Trail, I felt a bit disappointed. I had a bit of time to wait for the bus but had a nice smooth connection in Yujing so I was back in Tainan City within 2 hours.

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Summary

Distance: Roughly 11km

Difficulty: 2.5/5, without Yixiantian, it’s a 2.

Ease accessing the trail: 3/5. Frequent buses to Yujing, but not as many to Meiling from there.

Pros: Excellent views, Yixiantian trail.

Cons: Lots of tarmac, signage could be better.

Advice: Take a camera, go on a clear day.

Recommended? For the views, yes but the hiking isn’t the best.

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Well, that’s it for this hike, next up I’ll be bringing my Taitung trip report.

Tom/

Last Sunday’s trip to Yangmingshan was successful in that I got my passion for hiking back and wanted to head out again this weekend.

I didn’t however, want to go too far. Most information about hiking in Taiwan in English is about the North/East of the country. I wanted to stay more local but by Friday was getting desperate, with no clear ideas. Pingtung seemed inaccessible by bus, and I was struggling for information about hikes in Tainan, at least accessible or sufficiently challenging.

Finally, I made a breakthrough around 9:45pm on Friday night. I searched ‘Tainan Hiking Trails’ in Google Maps and found Dadongshan, Tainan’s highest mountain in Baihe District, Tainan. Google Maps suggested I could get there by bus, but would take 6 hours, really? I dug deeper, using the bus numbers on http://tainanbus.info/ to find timetables, and it suggested I could get there in about 2 hours. The only issue was the trail-head…

I looked on Google Street View, blogs, at pictures, but couldn’t work out where the trail to Dadongshan started. I satisfied myself I knew roughly where it started, and that it was a popular walk, so decided to set the alarm for 4:30am and get some sleep…

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A broken 3 hour 30 of sleep later, and I dragged myself out of bed. I made myself a coffee, and didn’t pack much in my bag. Just a jumper, towel and my walking poles. I left the house at 5:10am, cycled to the train station and parked up. I got some water, topped up my iPass and took the 5:38am train to Xinying (新營).

It was still dark when I got there 40 minutes later, and very quiet. I found the bus station, hidden, across from the train station.

It was an easy trip over to Guanziling (關子嶺), I took the 6:35 Yellow bus to Baihe (白河) arriving 20 minutes later. I waited 20 minutes more, for the Y12 to Guanziling (關子嶺) and that was another 20 minute journey.

(For reference, you can find everything you need to know about buses in Tainan at http://tainanbus.info/ and http://tainanbus.info/overview.html – shows where different colour buses go from. When you click on example ‘Yellow Line’ there is a map in Chinese of where all the Yellow buses go. On individual pages, e.g. http://tainanbus.info/yellow/yellow.html there are timetables, and it shows the fares too. It’s quite simple to use, the only places you can’t really get to in Tainan are Beimen, Nanxi and Nanhua.)

I digress, I got off the bus in Guanziling and started my walk. I carried on along the road, before taking a left and continuing for 1.5km.

The road climbed uphill away from Guanziling and I passed by an information board after 20 minutes, so I knew the trail head was near. I thought I needed to take a turn off the road, but as I followed other hikers getting out their cars, I realised I needed to follow the road.

Once past the main car-park, Dadongshan started to be signposted and the road ran out, turning into a track. I took a left turn, steeply up and that’s how things continued.

There was another area of confusion about 1km further along. Some walkers were taking a right up a narrow path, whilst the main track carried on and made a hairpin turn. I followed the hairpin around, then stupidly at the next hairpin, continued straight on. When I saw walkers going in the other direction after about 100m, I knew I should gone back on myself at the second hairpin.

I carried on to where the path split, one route going steeply uphill and the other going along the ground, both heading for Dadongshan. I took the steep track to the left continuing through the forest to the 4.3km mark where the paths joined and it became a rocky trail.

The path made a series of switchbacks for the remaining 2km or so to the top. Due to haze, probably caused by pollution, the views were not great. The surface was good, but I knew coming down would hit my knees hard.

Shortly before the top, a sign said 0.09km to go and I thought I was nearly there… except the path continued steeply up some wooden/mud steps then leveled off. I thought I’d made it, nearly celebrated then saw another set of even steeper steps to finish off the walk!

Finally I reached the summit after a 1 hour 54 minute hike from Guanziling. I was stood on the highest point in Tainan and that felt pretty good indeed. 1241m above sea level, or 4085ft, making the highest mountain I’d hiked up.

I got talked to a local at the top who said he hiked up there every week with his group, he asked where I was from and it turned out he knew Sheffield, the city I was born in. I accepted the offer of some oolong tea. I spent 25 minutes at the top, and there wasn’t a view to speak of. A little bit disappointing but it felt great to have done it.

The descent began, and it was as I expected, tough on my knees. I used my walking poles more like skiing poles, preferring to let gravity do its job.

About 40 minutes into the descent, the path split and I carried on ahead, which I nearly regretted. It was a slightly shorter route, but steeper and on tarmac. I got back to the bit where I got lost on my way up and I knew I was halfway down.

I learnt from my mistake, and went down the narrow path avoiding the second hairpin and continued to descend to the road. From there, it was a 2km walk back to Guanziling along the road. The tarmac certainly made things quicker as I arrived back at 1129, a good 30 minutes before the bus.

Getting back was relatively easy, the 12pm bus to Baihe and a quick change onto the 1225 bus back to Xinying. I got lucky, I walked into Xinying train station and there was a late running Tze Chiang train to Tainan pulling in. It meant I got back to Tainan at 1320, which was 40 minutes quicker than my journey to Guanziling.

For reference, here are the bus times. Buses are approximately hourly to/from Guanziling but every 20 minutes on the Baihe to Xinying route.

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Overall, it was good walk and well worth doing a bit of research to find it. One thing that surprised was just how many other people were doing it. I might well have said ‘good morning’ or ‘hello’ in both English and Chinese 100 times! I never went more than 30 seconds without seeing someone! It made Yangmingshan look like a ghost town.

Summary

Distance: 14km

Difficulty: 2.5/5

Easy accessing the trail: 2/5 – research was needed before hand, own transport could shorten the walk to 6/10km round trip.

Pros: Good mountain climb, highest point in Tainan, forest cover.

Cons: Poor views, lots of other people, half the walk is on tarmac.

Recommended? Yes.

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Well that’s all, I’ll be bringing you a post from another of my hikes next week.

Tom.

Welcome to Hiking with Tom, the new series in my blog where I bring you reports of hiking in Taiwan. I’m hoping to head out at least twice a month, but hey, let’s see how it goes.

One of the great things about the UK was being able to pick up and bring back my hiking boots and poles to Taiwan. For those who don’t know, I just to hike quite a bit in the UK and completed, ‘the Pennine Way’ and ‘the Coast to Coast’ amongst others, but this is going back a few years. Intro over, let’s get into it…

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Being reacquainted with my walking boots and poles inspired me to do a bit of research hiking more in Taiwan. I had been to Yangmingshan before, and done Hemei/Shitou ‘mountains’ just outside Xindian in New Taipei but wanted to know more. Throughout last week, I spent hours doing my research and came up with a few ideas.

I wanted to go Saturday but no dice, my annual work’s meal scuppered that so Sunday it had to be. The forecast was for rain, but after midday. Given I’ve always enjoyed walking early morning, that didn’t matter too much anyway. Saturday work’s meal done, I went on a bike ride, bought my bus ticket for Sunday’s trip and tried to get some sleep…

1:00am and my alarm went off, yes 1:00am. The plan was to head to Taipei, then onto Yangmingshan overnight with the possibility of hot springs after. I got my rucksack packed with waterproofs and some spare clothes, taking into account, I expected to do the hot springs in Xinbeitou after.

I left my apartment at 1:20, ordered a taxi and was outside the bus stop at 1:35am, ahead of the 2:00am bus to Taipei. There were no issues, and I was in the capital shortly after 6. I took the MRT to Jiantan, and from there had a 15 minute wait for bus R5 to Yangmingshan. I was not the only one with the idea of going out early.

Unlike my last time to Yangmingshan, the bus didn’t take too long as you’d expect on a Sunday morning and there was a short wait for bus 108, that does a circuit around stopping at the major tourist sites. At Erziping I got off and it was time to get the hike underway. I wanted something challenging, and I planned to head to Mt Miantian, Mt Xiangtian then on the Datun range and play it by ear after that.

For illustration purposes, here was my planned route. I started walking at 7:37am, the times shown between all the places add up to 7 hours 35, I knew I could do it in less.

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It didn’t look much and the opening 1.8km to Erziping were a stroll in the park, an easy trail. ‘Ping’ for reference means a flat area, so between mountains in this context.

I made my way to the Mt Miantian trail head, there were two routes. One on a gravel track, I chose the other, a trail that involved the first of many slippery, mossy covered steps. I reached the head of the Mt Miantian trail at 8:19 and was treated to 20 minutes of step climbing. It wasn’t technically difficult but it was tedious. The summit at 977m was reached, mountain one done!

It was a sharp downhill then a short, rolling ascent between Mt Miantian and Mt Xiangtian, which was quite dull. It felt like such an insignificant peak but at 949m, would be amongst the highest if it were in England.

The descent to Xiangtian Pond was much like the ascent up Mt Miantian but slightly shorter. At the bottom, it wasn’t immediately obvious whether to go left or right but a left turn took me to a sign and Xiangtian Pond itself. I turned right and had a quick look at the ‘pond’ which was completely dry, I backtracked and carried on left through the trees on a flat stepped trail to Miantianping.

On the walk to Miantianping there were a couple of groups of walkers and the 1.3km was very easily done in under 20 minutes.

Arriving at Miantianping, there was a pavilion and warning sign about the trail to Mt Datun West, that caution should be taken after wet weather. I didn’t think too much of it, especially as the first 250 metres were a steady climb up through tree roots, I noted it was fairly easy, how that was to change!

The roots gave way to clay like mud, difficult to get a foothold or pole-hold in, and extremely slick on the surface. The remaining 450 metres to the summit were amongst the hardest 450 metres I think I’ve ever done. There were support ropes in places and I abandoned my poles in favour of dragging my way up with rope.

Eventually, even after slipping over twice I made it to the summit at 1010, just under 30 minutes, little did I know that the descent to Mt Datun South would be just as, if not more difficult!

From the summit of Mt Datun West, the trail went straight into a scramble I was totally unprepared for. Add in a bit of mud, and the length of, it became frustrating. I notably slipped and fell on my coccyx which was almost funny. I had said I wanted a challenge, this was definitely that!

Despite feeling longer it only took 12 minutes to reach the bottom. The path leveled out, through more and slippery steps, before the path turned left up another difficult, muddy section towards the summit of Mt Datun South.

In this short 30 minute span, the fog had started to roll in and the summit of Mt Datun South was much like Mt Xiangtian, feeling rather insignificant at 959m. With the fog, I didn’t stick around long and made a decision to try, and get down towards Datunping as quickly as possible.

The descent to Datunping took just over 10 minutes, and I slipped over right on my backside in front of a family of four which was a bit embarrassing! I had two options from there, a 3.2km stroll back to Erziping Visitor Center or a shorter 2.8km walk back via Mt Datun. Having done 4 mountains already, the decision was easy even with the fog… I was going up Mt Datun itself!

This was actually quite a boring walk, it was endless steps through the fog to the top. The steps were not moss covered like most of the other ones on the walk and the only difficult bit, was staying awake during what felt like an endless trudge to the top.

There was absolutely no view, and more annoyingly, you couldn’t access the proper peak of Mt Datun because of a weather observatory. It was however, 1090m up and the highest point of the day.

There was little motivation to find an extended route back to Erziping Visitor Center, and I followed the path to Anbu, the entrance of which was slightly hidden, next to a locked gate. There were endless steps down too, these were of the slippery kind and I had to turn off due a trail closure. It put me on the tarmac road, back steeply to the visitor center car-park.

The walk was done, my legs had had enough. It had been fun, and I’d certainly got the challenge I wanted. The 10km walk was finished after 4 hours and 35 minutes, which I felt it was quite a solid time.

I made my way to Yangmingshan Bus Terminal and made my way to home in Tainan. A fun day, and I can’t wait to bring my report from my next hike, hopefully this weekend!

Tom.