Topographic maps and exploring Taiwan

Travel Taiwan Travel
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This post goes out to all the map-lovers (cartophiles?) out there.

Earlier this year, when I wanted to climb Yushan, I bought a complete set of 上河文化 (Sunriver) 25,000:1 maps of Taiwan’s high mountains. (The series is called 臺灣百岳導遊圖 (Taiwan Hundred Peaks Guide Maps - my translation), and you can buy it from one of the hiking stores by Taipei Main Station.) These are the newest and coolest-looking topographic maps of Taiwan out there, but they only cover a very small area. If you’re looking to climb mid-range peaks, you’d probably be better off with the earlier 50,000:1 series published in 2004, also by Sunriver: 台灣高山全覽圖 (Taiwan High Mountain Full View Maps - not sure why I’m translating when the maps are all in Chinese =P). Unfortunately I only have a few of these; I’d like to acquire the rest. Or, if you just want to explore the small mountains around Taipei, Sunriver has yet another series for that: 大台北郊山導遊圖 (Greater Taipei Suburb Mountain Guide Maps). There are seven of these 25,000:1 maps, and they cover Yangmingshan, Wuzhishan (五指山), Wufenshan (五分山), the Keelung-Gongliao area, Xindian-Sanxia-Tucheng, and Guanyinshan (觀音山) in Linkou.

But what happens when you want to go to an area not covered by any of these maps? Of course, there’s still Google Maps (not always accurate or effective), road atlases aimed at car drivers, and the touristy maps sold in bookstores. There’s even government-published topographic maps you can find if you Google 台灣行政區域圖, click the first result, click the 計畫成果查詢 tab at the lower left and choose a county and city/town. Unfortunately, these are too small for me to read, and when I asked the Ministry of the Interior where I could find paper copies, I was told that they don’t sell them, they just distribute them to local governments. So, just for fun, I called the Miaoli County government and asked if they sold copies; they didn’t, of course. Typical bureaucratic ineptitude, I thought.

So I emailed the Ministry of the Interior again and asked if they sold any other topographic maps. Turns out that they do! Who knew? A bit of strategic Googling led me to http://www.land.moi.gov.tw/chhtml/contentprint.asp?mcid=354&cid=114, which gives you an overview (in Chinese) of what maps are available and links to a list of places where you can buy them. Last week I headed over to the “shop” in Taipei, which is at Xinyi Road Section 3 #43 2F. When I walked into the building, the guard asked “Ni you shenme shi ma?”, and the same thing happened when I walked into the office on the second floor. But once I told them I wanted to buy maps, the folks there were very helpful. They brought out a paper with the entire map of Taiwan divided up into 300+ squares, each neatly labeled with a name and a number, and asked me which ones I wanted. The 25,000:1 maps are NT$300 each, they’re printed on regular old paper, not pre-folded or anything, and they’re a decade old, but still, I was incredibly excited to finally find a place where I could buy a map of any area of Taiwan I wanted!

Anyway, if you’ve always wanted to know where to get topographic maps of Taiwan, now you know. :slight_smile:

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Where is the “most helpful post” button? :wink: :bow:

Since the list of sales offices you mention is in the proprietary MS-Word format, here it is again in UTF-8 (Unicode) plain text:
國土測繪中心北區第一測量隊隊部（臺北市信義路3段43號二樓；電話：02-27043344）Táiběi, Taipei
國土測繪中心地籍資料庫桃園分庫（桃園縣桃園市中山路572號；電話：03-3310193）Táoyuán, Taoyuan
國土測繪中心地籍資料庫（臺中市南屯區博愛街80巷51號；電話：04-22522966#350）Táizhōng, Taichung
國土測繪中心南區第一測量隊隊部（嘉義市國楊3街27號4樓；電話：05-2339072）Jiāyì, Chiayi
國土測繪中心南區第二測量隊隊部（高雄縣鳳山市王生明路123號1樓；電話：07-7192723）Gāoxióng, Kaohsiung
國土測繪中心東區測量隊隊部（屏東市潮州鎮延平路30號2樓；電話：08-7891455）Píngdōng, Pingtung
國土測繪中心北區第一測量隊花蓮辦公室（花蓮縣吉安鄉東海10街22號之1；電話：03-8511146）Huālián, Hualien

Chinese website of the publishing authority:
內政部國土測繪中心 (Nèizhèngbù Guótǔcèhuì Zhōngxīn)
nlsc.gov.tw/websites/i_ext/default.aspx
English website:
Ministry of the Interior, National Land Surveying and Mapping Center
nlsc.gov.tw/websites/nlsceng … fault.aspx

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Thank you.

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This is brilliant. By weird coincidence I’ve been looking for something like this just lately. The scale is a bit coarser than I’d hoped for, but thanks, haokaiyang.

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The Sun River 1: 50,000 Series is still available at hiking stores and Eslite, but the most popular destinations like Snow Mtn have sold out.

For mid-range peaks, Sun river put out a series in 2003: a box set of 7 maps (a different area on each side with one map just an overview map of the island) that described a theoretical route from Fushan in Taipei County to LiLi in Pingdong County. Although some of the route is on mountain roads, this series focuses west of the Central Mountain Range. It has been particularly useful for exploring in Ali Shan, Namasiya and other places outside the range of the other 1:50,000 series. I say theoretical because parts of the route like Beikeng Creek Historic Path near Guanwu were destroyed by typhoons.

I haven’t seen the 2003 series on sale for a while, but like the 1:25,000 topographic maps you have obtained, the same quandary presents itself: how up to date are they? Whenever I saw local hiking clubs with these maps, they had inked in many routes by hand, so I wondered how much route information was originally on them. One other thing to consider is that some paths get very neglected, and a path on the map in actuality may well have gone back to bush. A path I hiked in GueiShan about ten years ago, had completely overgrown when I visited there recently. Of course, on treks like Jade Mtn and other well-known routes you don’t really need topographic maps.

So what use are the topographic maps? At a resolution of 1:25,000, they probably can’t help in a true exploration off a path which I definitely don’t recommend. At the same time they can’t give much of a big picture either with all the road connections that you need to follow to get to the trailhead. In the absence of any other map,they might be helpful but if they were published ten years ago, expect extra roads, trailheads in different locations, new paths and perhaps some paths out of commission.

At the same time I can think of several areas that I’d like more intel on!

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I haven’t hiked very extensively at all, but in my experience the Sunriver maps have been quite accurate. They definitely have more roads and trails marked than the government-published maps I bought, and they distinguish between rough trails and well-established trails. Just two days ago a fellow Forumosan and went way up into the hills of Beiheng (北橫) and hiked a rough trail to Dilushan, a 2160-meter peak. The 1:50,000 map got us there without a hitch.

I think the 1:25,000 maps give a pretty good picture of what an area looks like. If you want to know how to get there, it’s pretty easy to figure that out with Google Maps or a road atlas. But yeah, mountain roads and trails change quickly in Taiwan. Of course, I like these maps not just as aids to hiking, but also because unlike most maps I see here, they actually tell you the names of mountains and rivers, and I’ve always been curious about that sort of thing.

What I’d really like to see are the Sunriver cycling maps. I haven’t seen these for sale anywhere, but I bet they’d be great for guys like me who prefer cycling to hiking.

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I’m very familiar with the 1:50,000 series and that’s probably enough for most people’s requirements in the areas they cover. Even so, not all the paths are marked or the farm roads. For example, the No. 4 map in the series you probably used to hike DiluShan doesn’t show the trail further on towards SueiBaishan that drops off the ridge and goes through an extensive ShenMu area nor does it show the route from Galahe to TangSueishan (2090m) both of which are tagged and roped paths

Anyway, thanks for your thoughts on the topographic maps.

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that is fantastic, thank you so much! I have been wanting this kind of thing for a couple years, but like you mentioned above just got the popular area topos like Yu Shan and such. This is fantastic. For others not able to go all the way to Taipei, check out here to buy online: 163.29.188.139

Man, I’m thrilled, really thanks a ton for posting this!!! And $300NT for a topo is pretty cheap to boot! but are these like just printer printouts or are they more full size like we would see in North American style topo maps? you mentioned “normal paper” so jsut wondering if its the material only or the size too.

And while this thread is going. For the other Topo lovers that travel, this link has downloadable (big versions!) of maps (though old) in teh Thai/Laos/Cambodia/Vietnam area. these are old US army versions. but for many areas, there is nothing even as close to as good as these available.
lib.utexas.edu/maps/ams/indo … _thailand/

edit: that site also has some taiwan topos, but probably not nearly as good as the above mentioned ones from the OP.
lib.utexas.edu/maps/ams/taiwan/

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I went to the Dunnan Eslite tonight to look for a COMPLETE book of maps of Taiwan, by which I mean the kind of book that divides the whole country into a grid and has a two-page spread for every rectangle on the grid. I’ve got a pretty good collection of maps already, but I keep finding myself visiting places that aren’t covered on any of my maps. Most books that purport to cover all of Taiwan’s towns leave out lots of interesting bits, particularly in the mountains, because they apparently think no one would want to go there.

Anyway, I found this four-volume collection from a publisher called Outdoor Life (戶外生活). None of the volumes were shrink-wrapped, so I flipped through the first two and was very impressed with what I saw: detailed 25,000-to-1 maps that showed every road I wanted to see. Unfortunately, at around NT$1500 per volume, they were out of my price range, but I think I might start saving up money to splurge on the whole set. What’s really great is that they’re brand new, published earlier this year.

A bit of Googling just now led me to this similar two-volume collection from Sunriver, but it’s 50,000-to-1 and not that much cheaper. At the moment these are the only two complete map collections I know of. Do any of you guys own either of them, or maybe something similar that I don’t know about? Was it worth the price? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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I have the Outdoor Life A1, A2, A3 and A4 sets from about 5 years ago. They cover the west side of the island except Kaohsiung and PingDong County. That’s pretty useful for those places in Nantou County, Miaoli county and so on that are too far west to be covered by the Sun River series. I don’t know if there is an A5 book covering the south west, but there is a much slimmer Outdoor Life B6 book that has maps for the East Coast at 1: 20,000. Unfortunately, it doesn’t cover the whole eastern area up to the Central Mountain range just those areas where the roads are. That means the mountain area west of Suao to Nanao that are also out of the range of the Sun River maps are not covered. For those areas, I bought the topographic maps. Also, the B6 book has some overview maps of the whole Eastern area (Maps 205 to 247) that are at 1:100,000 and are useful enough for car drivers. All of these books are useful to drivers and bikers, but for hikers, although some paths are marked, it’s not the whole story.

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Thanks for all the info above!

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I swung by Eslite earlier today to check out the Outdoor Life 2012 editions and it looks like they’ve got the whole island mapped out in the four volumes: A11, A12, A13 and A14. However, the maps are all at 1:25,000 which is fine for the countryside areas but too cluttered for Taipei City. The old 2007 set had close ups of popular areas at 1:10,000 and everything else at 1:20,000, so it’s a little less. There are more hiking routes marked in the new editions, but not everything of course. Perhaps they heeded people’s complaints about the missing areas from the previous editions, so that’s a real bonus. To study and plan routes in those places will be easier now. I haven’t seen the Sun River road atlas, so if anyone has that, let’s hear from you!

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Recently passed by a couple of Eslite and can’t seem to find anything that looks like a hiking map. Suggested to the clerk a few of the names cited above, they responded they’re all sold out.

Anybody got any update on where one can get topo maps these days?