This looks interesting. I was just in the area two weeks ago. Would have checked it out had I known.
[quote]Taiwan’s first mountain biking trails formally open with race
01/03/2012 (Liberty Times)
Mountain biking has been alive and well in Taiwan for years now, and Taiwan’s lack of quality bike paths has been solved by the opening of the country’s first exclusive mountain bike lanes on routes through the Baolai Mountain area in Kaohsiung’s Liugui on Sunday, which was marked by the “2012 Liugui International Bicycle Cross-Country Race.”
After the massive typhoon of 2009, the Liugui police station was rebuilt using green construction principles, and as part of that project, existing commercial roads and pathways through the mountains nearby were developed into a mountain bike-only path system. The roadway runs 40 kilometers and has over 1,000 meters of rise over its course, making it a very challenging ride.
To mark the formal opening of the paths, the district office held its first international mountain bike competition, with various divisions of competition for top riders, city residents, and so on, attracting over 200 bike enthusiasts. The starter’s gun echoed at 8 a.m. Sunday morning on Baolai Avenue, and the competitors followed a route that took them past the Suluopo Hot Springs and the Zhulin Recreational Farm. In the top riders division, Peng Kui-hsiang turned in a time of 1:37:28 to take home the gold.
Wang Peng-yu, head of Liugui’s Office of Tourism, says that the Baolai mountain bike trails run along incomparable scenery and have terrain to satisfy both the average rider and the very dedicated mountain biker. Three trails are mapped out: recreational, fitness and technically challenging.[/quote]
taiwanheadlines.gov.tw/ct.as … &ctNode=10
Thanks for that. I’ll check this out next weekend.
Please let us know how it is. I am especially curious if the route is completely sealed to cars and scooters (or is more chabuduo) and if you can rent bikes.
I went down there for the race. I was not impressed with the accommodations-everything was really, really expensive. We stayed in a cabin at the “hot spring” and it cost us 3000 a night for an old cabin with paper thin walls (cue late night KTV), terribly slanted floors, mustiness, old furniture and the worst bed ever. I think that the floor would have been softer…
The scenery was pretty nice. I can’t comment on all the trails but the stuff that the race was on was basically paved/unpaved farm roads. There may be singletrack but there wasn’t any in the race. If you are going to be in the area already, it may be worth going, but I don’t plan on going back to ride.
The race was fun though!
edit: The places we rode were pretty tough for cars to get into, but they could get in (again, that was in the race). I didn’t see a place to rent bikes, or much else of anything, really.
speaking of new routes, does anyone know where to find this book?
it supposedly gives several good maps for cyclers
taiwanfun.com/pics/0803/FYIS … ing007.jpg
I finallly made it to Baolai but had a very bad day. Spent the first little while trying to find where this trail was. There are no signs but it seems like it was something everyone in town would know about. After asking five or six locals at their shops on the main road I decided to go look for [quote]Baolai Avenue[/quote] which I assumed would have a name like Baolai Da Jie or Baolai Da Dao and not Jungjeng Road. I finally find the police station and think I’m in the clear. No one in there knows what the hell I’m talking about either. They kept telling me all the good bike trails were in Pingdong.
I decide to take my bike out and roam around Baolai anyway hoping to run into a sign or an interesting road. My back tire needed a little air so I took out this air compressor someone gave me five years ago but I’d never used. It was on about two seconds and then stopped. The cigarette lighter was shot and every bit of air went out of the tire as I tried to remove the comressor from my tire. I had parked next to the police station so I go in there thinking they’ll have a pump. The officer leads me out behind the police station to a tourist information center where they give me a pump and a map of the trails I’m looking for. Unfortunately the air compressor didn’t just screw up my lighter, it also took out the valve on my tube. When it got half full with air it would start to leak. Some guy in a suit was out pumping up my tire while directing another guy to take pictures of the whole thing. My day was over. When enough goes wrong I know when to quit. It was getting late anyway. It’s only a 45 minute drive from where I live so not a big loss.
On the bright side I do know where to go next time I go up there. You enter a street named Baolai Second Lane (寶來二巷) and keep going up the mountain. Get a map at the tourist center. It’s on the right hand side of the road just as you get across the big bridge leading into Baolai.
I love Taiwan days like that.
they’re very character building in the faux-Nietzchian mode.
I can think of about two good mountain bike tracks in Taiwan. Two. In a whole island full of fucking mountains.
Pathetic, really.
South is the place so has a capital S, right?
