Here’s a round up of some hikes that I enjoyed this year. None of these are particularly well-known, a bit rough in places, but with good views.
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Bilu Shan and Yang Tou Shan. Both of these 3000 plus peaks are in the Taroko Gorge National Park. It takes about 3 days starting from Dayuling at the head of the gorge. It’s a difficult saw-tooth ridge between the two peaks, the path often dipping down off the ridge and climbing back up with only a couple of feasible campsites for a tent or two. One thing to notice on dry ridges like this is for old plastic bottles stuffed into the undergrowth. Straw has been inserted into the top so that rainwater will drain into it. Most people usually climb just one peak up and back as a day trip. The path up to Bilu Shan is tremendously steep, but worth it for the unobstructed views. Just down from the Yang Tou Shan trail head, the CihYun Hostel is closed but people camp there and the water facilities and restroom are still functioning.
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The Wu-Ba River Route that goes south along the Suqi River from Wujie village in Nantou County down to Bakalas village off the 16 Hwy road that goes to Shuili via DiLi. I combined this with a 3 day hike to GanZorWanShan further north near Wushe before walking and hitching down to Wujie. This two day river walk is only possible in the winter when the water level is low. Local hunters use this route to reach their hunting grounds further downstream, so I wasn’t surprised when vehicles came by at night when I camped up from the sand bank. It’s a nice change from being in dense forest to be in a fairly wide river bed, and there’s no road only the faint tyre tracks of off road jeeps and mountain bikes.
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ShweYuHu is a lake at 670 meters altitude on the border of YiLan and Taipei County. Where the Bei-I Hwy reaches the crest before dropping down to JiaoXi, there are some food stalls and a rest area. The path goes from there along a ridge southwards to reach this untouched reed covered lake. Saw wild pig here. There are several rougher paths going further up into the mountains or along ridge lines down in the direction of PingLin.
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ChweZrShan (680 meters). This peak sticks out from the border range just south of ShweyuHu. It can be reached by a side road from the Bei-I Hwy about 1 km beyond the Bei-Hwy crest in the direction of JiaoXi. Another way is to do it is as a side trip from the Running Horse Trail which is behind JiaoXi town. Last time I did this, my flashlight battery ran out and I had to wait for the full moon to rise so I could walk back down to JiaoXi. Nice views from this grassy peak.
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AYuShan (1420 meters). This is another mountain whose lower reaches are actively used by hunters. The approach is the small forestry road going along the side river from XiaoYi village east of WuLai. This route heads south for about 5 kms before reaching an old concrete road bridge. Shortly after the path climbs steeply up to the summit where there is an old weather station and a great view of the range and the coast below. Although, the bridge makes a good place to camp, I chose to hike up to a small saddle an hour further up away from the noisy river. At night, gun shots rang out, and not long after torchlight shining up at the tree tops heralded the arrival of two hunters. I could hear their shots for another hour or two as they went downhill back to the road. Coming down from AYuShan peak to the YiLan side the path came down to the old Japanese road. 15 years ago, when I last did this route the hiking path cut across the road remnant and went right down to the river and from there it was necessary to wade downstream to the road. Now, the forestry people have regraded the road and the old path has disappeared. So this time I took the winding dirt road and came out on the sealed road just down from the FuShan Botanical Preserve entrance. A great hike which like the others doesn’t suffer from over-crowding!