Did this hike a couple of weekends ago and it took two days. Although it’s possible to use higher mountain paths to minimise time spent on the road, the weather being cloudy with intermittent drizzle, I chose to use a combination of road and path to stay as close to the river as possible, see the bird life along the banks and look at the camping and rafting potential and then, further upriver, leave the roads and houses behind and hike into the wild (Taipei County style!).
First, a little background about this area. PingLin is halfway along Hwy. 9 from ShinDien to Ilan and at the top end of the Feitsui Dam whose outlet is a few kilometers downriver from Wulai. At PingLin two rivers join forces feeding into this dam. The road to Ilan follows one in a SE direction and the other branch, the one I followed upstream, flows in from a NE direction. The road system, as well as serving a myriad bunch of tea farms and hamlets on both sides of the river, also has a few through routes over the valley walls to PingHsi and another very quiet road to ShwangShi near Fulong. Having walked, camped and driven on these roads numerous times in the past and gazed out on the long range views, it took a while to realise a missing piece of the jigsaw was to spend time on the valley floor.
To maximise my time in new areas, I followed the road on the 'South Bank' which goes past the Tea Museum. The road goes past a scattering of houses and fields along the river side which has a greenish tinge in its deeper parts. I'm not sure what regulations there are for agricultural activities along these rivers, but I thought of a village on the south side of the Feitsui Dam I had hiked to several years previously whose inhabitants were later evicted and the houses demolished, the area now only visited by fern gatherers and wild pig hunters, aboriginals who used to do a lot of tree planting years ago. Meanwhile, the tea business on the stretch of road I was on seemed to be expanding in the form of new looking steep mini terraces of tree bushes. Since the road left the river bank to go up to a temple higher up I took an untagged path over a hill to come down to, yes, more tea fields. There was a smell of Jasmine in the air as I made my way back on the road through ChongLiao to the bridge at HulianTan and the location of the Cloud9 campsite. As it was very early on a Saturday, I passed by quietly, but the campsite looked quite pretty in an excellent section of the river that looked particularly suited to rafting and tubing and the like. Going further upriver, there were a few more lodging possibilities, mostly catering to large groups and probably quite busy in the summer months. The road ends here and the only option is to cross over on a swing bridge to the 'northern' bank. The path leads to the road system going upriver all the way to Ser Yuan bridge just after the turn off where the road from ShwangShi comes in. This put me back on the south side. So far up river now there wasn't much cultivation, and plenty of egrets could be seen resting on rocks as well as a serpent eagle perched on a telephone pole.
Around here is another old footbridge just behind a farmhouse off the road and ,after running the gauntlet of three unnecessarily irate barking dogs whose owner ineffectually tried to call them off, got on to the most exciting part of the new territory I was exploring: a rough old path that went along the river quite a ways until it petered out into a landslide.There were no buildings or roads in sight, just thick forest and the whitish rocks along the riverside. I bushwacked up to some graves further up the hill, and from there joined the road that goes up and over a high point and down to ChingChiaChuang which is near where the WanTan River joins the other tributary BeiShir River. Both rivers have paths on them beyond where the last feeder roads end at the remotest settlements in this valley (and probably where that path I abondoned also ends up).The path continuing up the WanTan goes through a camp site complex that was empty except for an elderly caretaker who was locking up and going home........The path is marked by some tags at a bend in the driveway of a house at the end of the road.
My goal, to hike in an untouched part of this long river that feeds the thirst of Taipei City, could now begin. As the light began to slowly fade, I decided to see it out with a couple of leisurely hours hiking further up the WanTan to arrive at what must be the furthest house from any road that is still in use in Taipei County. The old rice fields, grazed down to a lawn by buffalo which thankfully weren't in sight when I arrived in the last minutes of twilight, the bats flitting about and insects and birds adding to the background noise of rushing water made me glad to pause once again and find a place to rest. Since the old stone and wood house is only used as a store shed and no one was home, I set up under a sheltered open ended yard area of the building that wouldn't expose me to any nocturnal buffalo incursions if they were to return any time that night. Looking out at the night sky, my dinner of mashed potato with crab meat and Ritz crackers and Cheese never tasted so good!
The next day, the path continued for several kilometers along the now shallower and smaller stream to a small shrine called FuderGong where a small settlement heralds a return to the mountain road system: a back road that leads to a junction, left to ShwangHsi 20 kms away and right to DaHsi 18 kms away. Not wanting to be on tarmac yet, I climbed a small trail to a pass over a small mountain and back onto the ShwangHsi to DaHsi road and on the way was rewarded with a rare sighting of both a barking deer and a wild pig within a few minutes of each other.
Now that large power motorcycle clubs are discovering these roads within easy reach of urban hubs like Taipei and Ilan, camping out overnight in such areas helps get the jump on them and enjoy the peace, quiet and glorious views that almost every county north and south has in such abundance for the determined seeker.