A mushroom walks into a bar and asks for a beer. The bartender says “Sorry we don’t serve mushrooms here”. To which the mushroom replies. “That’s not fair, I’m just a fun guy” (Fungi).
On the recent Batongguan hike I took many photos of the fungi we passed. Though not catalogue quality shots, this sample represents the huge range of mushrooms, lichen and other fungi to be found in the mountains here.
For a country with a population density of over 600 people per sq km it seems implausible that you can hike 100kms over 7 days and only meet a few dozen. But that is the hidden secret of the Yushan national park and the Japanese era central cross island walk trail.
I was very fortunate to join Richard at Barking Deer Adventures on this restricted hiking trip. Five of us started from Dongpu 東浦¦ at 1200m, climbed to the Batongguan meadows at 2900m, took a side trip to the peak of Yushan (Taiwan’s highest at 3952m), trekked for two days around 3000m before descending over 3 day to the eastern entrance of the Yushan national park near Yuli 玉里 at 400m. What a truly incredible hike. For its remoteness, variety of landscape, difficulty, and historical significance.
I have just enjoyed the pleasure of showing three very good friends around Taiwan for a week. While personally it was a great privilege to have such company to show around, the entire week was made so pleasurable by everything Taiwan. We enjoyed swimming in rivers and the ocean, climbed Daguan Shan and Hehuan Shan. And of course we ate like kings and were shown nothing but great hospitality.
We made a 5 day island tour across the southern cross island highway, east coast, Taroko Gorge, Hehuan Shan in snow and back past Sun Moon Lake to Kaohsiung. On their last day here we made a day trip to Taipei to see the bike exhibition followed by dinner then returned to Kaohsiung in the evening.
Living on the heavily populated and industrialised plains around Koahsiung it is difficult to believe that just 25 km away there exists a great mountain range that is hardly populated, clean and mostly untouched. That is not to say they are completely covered in virgin rain-forest. No, all the really good timber was removed years ago through logging, any flattish area is used for cultivating something and many of the slopes are covered in betel nut plantations or orchards. But large tracks of the Taiwan mountain area are completely isolated and only accessible by foot.
For the southern two thirds of the island there are really only two roads that allow west to east travel through the mountain range. The middle road passes over at Hehuan shan at 3200m . The southern road passes over at Yakou at 2722m.
Travelling these roads it is easy to see why there are only the two. Much of the roadways hug closely to the rock walls, or pass over large gullies and streams. There are continuous teams of excavators and rock clearers keeping the road passable. When a typhoon passes through, the roads are normally closed for a few days to weeks at a time as they clear the rockfalls, rebuild the washouts and carve new tracks into the walls that have slid away. A drive along highway 20 is a drive along a geological work in progress.
We travelled on a weekend when a north easterly had drawn cold and dusty air down from the Gobi desert in northern China. The dust made the vista views of mountains quite misty. The cold made us realise we needed warmer clothes.
After six months of threats and promises I have finally made good on them all and published my blog.
I recently bought a Nikon D40x camera and hope to make good use of it filling the web with photos of life in Taiwan.
What better subject for my camera’s first photo than the salesman… [Read more →]
