Donāt hike alone in an area that could be dangerous to do so is a good rule to follow, anywhere.
taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/ ā¦ 2003554820
Looks like she shouldnt have been hiking alone.
Iām not certain that Tommy actually leaves his house because something might be dangerous.
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He doesnāt. But the good thing is we donāt have to buy the paper. Tommy posts all the juicy news right here on forumosa!
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Cats are dangerous too. One day, itāll eat him. 
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Man, Val di Rabbi is not a place where you hike alone in winter!! Even without falling and getting hurt, just getting lost in those valleys at night can kill you by hypothermia alone.
What the Hell was she thinking? :-s
There have been previous threads here on the lack of awareness among Taiwan mountain walkers.
Or maybe she was extremely experienced and Taiwanās best mountain guide who just had a bad day? Itās hard to tell from an armchair.
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Well like diving (which I dont do either 
) one is not supposed to do it alone.
What me hike? U gotta be joking. The only hikes i do is around the berkeley campus so at least I have some scenery to oogle. 
What hiking to see beautiful mountains you say? We got National Geographic for that.
[quote=āurodacusā][quote=āNovaspesā]Man, Val di Rabbi is not a place where you hike alone in winter!! Even without falling and getting hurt, just getting lost in those valleys at night can kill you by hypothermia alone.
What the Hell was she thinking? :-s[/quote]
There have been previous threads here on the lack of awareness among Taiwan mountain walkers.
Or maybe she was extremely experienced and Taiwanās best mountain guide who just had a bad day? Itās hard to tell from an armchair.[/quote]
Yes lack of awareness. This poor guy lost his footing because he was not aware enough of where exactly he was. Sad.
taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/ ā¦ 2003554916
Even though Taiwanās mountains are not Himalaya types, one still has to be very careful in certain areas.
This article further backs up your belief that you think a person shouldnāt leave his house because it āMIGHTā be dangerous. He wasnāt hiking alone and he was at a whopping 250m. Accidents can happen anywhere.
If I posted an article about someone that died from a slip and fall in their shower would you stop showering?
This is true. It is, in fact, the only reason cats keep humans.
Implying that he hasnāt already stopped.
I donāt in any way mean to say this was the case for the poor guy, for I have no way to know, but the vast majority of Taiwanese weekend hikers I meet on trails are grossly unprepared and underequipped for even the easiest hikes. Iāve seen people bring children in flip-flops to Wuliaojian, girls with cutesy, flat boots climb the Pingxi crags and so forth.
Put this together with trails that are easy and accessible but present deadly threats at times (try to fall from one of the Pingxi crags without dying or getting seriously fucked up) and youāll have, periodically, your dead guy. 
Iām sure youāre right but this is hardly limited to Taiwan.
We used to go to the lake district in the UK every year for a family hiking holiday and while we were burdened down with rucsacs full of spare clothes, waterproofs and emergency rations weād see people happily bumbling along in shorts and t-shirts with nothing more than a sweater in case the weather turned. Even in the summer mountains get nasty and cold, fast.
Tourists are often unprepared for almost anything.
I am sure that Taiwan is not the only country with this problem, but I can safely say that back home (north Italy and Austria) tourists are reasonably prepared for easy hikes (proper shoes, enough food, often proper clothingā¦) and just do not attempt the ones that present risks, like getting lost, falling or drowning.
As I said, I think part of the problem is that here there are trails publicized as Sunday family hikes that still present potentially lethal dangers (especially from falls). Wuliaojian, Huangdidian, the Pingxi Crags, Sandaoling trail and the Monkey Mountain trail all have at least one or two climbs where, if something goes wrong, you croak. Other times people just seem completely unaware of dangers of the outdoors. Iāve seen people try to pet the buffalos at Taoyuan Valley or ar QingTianGang or to pose with them for a āspecialā picture".
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I have never seen so many people hiking in completely inappropriate footwear until I came to Taiwan. Iāve seen women hiking moderately hard to extremely difficult trails with heels and slick bottomed leather boots. And not just a couple of them. I also saw a group of seniors each pose on the top rail of a fence. On the other side there was a couple of meters of brush that might have caught them before they fell a couple hundred meters to the river below. tbh Iām completely shocked that I havenāt seen anyone carried out on a stretcher yet. Iāve seen this in America several times.
But this thread is about how dangerous Tommy thinks hiking is. The article he linked to is about someone that was hiking alone at altitude in the winter. In that case she shouldnāt have been hiking alone.
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Sunday hikers , like Sunday drivers ā¦ are dangerous to themselves and to others (mostly to themselves in the case of Sunday hikers).
by the way, tommy doesnt worry about hiking because tommy doesnt hike , period.
Its true that more publicity should be given to particular dangers about seemingly safe hikes as prior mentionedā¦ huang ti tien, et al.
Back in the day , my mom used to go on weekly hikes joining ad hoc groups that formed at the train station. She avoided Huang Ti Tien after the first time. Smart she was.
I only went on one or two of those hikes, they were a lot of fun, but i can see how easily lost i wouldve been in the dense brush on many of those trails. I think i pretty much turned myself off hiking for life after that. I prefer cafe sitting (and watching pretty girls go by) Much safer
I do, do walks around the berkeley campus and walks around the lafayette reservoir. But those are not real hikes. Except the one on the perimeter of the reservoir takes you up and down near a thousand foot several times for about 8 miles if you do the whole loop. Really beautiful too, highly recommended for a day walk if you are around these parts. The only real danger is the (very slight) possibility of running into a coyote or worse a mountain lion. Because they are there. But usually timid. Best carry a big stick.
Itās about the knowledge of hiking/climbing.
Iāve hiked/climbed the snow mountain (3886m) in Taiwan decades ago.
It surprised me to see a group of amateur hikers lead by professionals (or at least much more professional than those) being so unprepared.
One lady that impressed me most wore jean, sandal, and carried a huge handbag, exactly like a tourist with even no knowledge about simple normal travel.
And it was not like pingxi or those small hills around Taipei, it was the Snow Mountain that requires 3~4 days to CLIMB.
But I do believe this does not only happen here.
Maybe only the real urban people would do this kind of stupid act?
It isnāt entirely a Taiwanese thing. There was that kid in the U.S. a few years ago, rock-climbing alone in the middle of nowhere, who had to cut his own arm off after a boulder he was climbing on shifted and pinned him.
OTOH, Taiwanese do seem to have a pretty bad reputation. See for example Jon Krakauerās āInto Thin Airā, where he talks about how unprepared the Taiwanese Mt. Everest expedition was, and how the Taiwanese man leading it acted irrationally.
In the same book you had examples of American wealthy types expecting to pay their way to the top and getting assisted all the way, not really taking the danger seriously enough. I donāt think Taiwanese are too bad, most of the time the weather is pretty predictable except when the odd group gets caught out in a typhoon.
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I often see he opposite. People going for a short 2-3 hr hike dressed like they are going mountaineering.