Shan Ding Lu

Kaohsiung, a city of nearly 2 million people, sits on the coastal edge of a broad alluvial plain that spans 25 kilometres to the foot of an impressive mountain range. Every piece of land from the ocean to the mountains is occupied by houses, factories, villages and farms. There is very little by way of natural open space.

But as soon as you reach the foot of the mountain range you are in a very different place. The flat populated plains change to precipitous forested ranges. The mountains are sliced by deeply cut valleys created by typhoon fed rivers.

The brief two months of Southern Taiwan’s mild winter have now past. In a few weeks the tropical rains will start and the stifling humidity will have people searching for cool relief. These last two years we have found that relief in the many pools and waterfalls accessible along the mountain range. Here are some of our favorites and directions on how to find them.

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Tags: Collections, Kaohsiung, Mountains, Uncategorized by Stephen
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After our very successful Jinshui camp trail hike I convinced fellow hiker Joel to climb the mighty Beidawu (North Dawu) mountain that looks over the Pingtung plains and Kaohsiung city.

Time exposure looking west to the setting New Year moon. The twin urban glows of Pingtung and Kaohsiung shine up through the sea of clouds.

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Tags: Chinese New Year, Mountains, Travel by Stephen
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A good road map and a bit of adventure can lead to some great discoveries. That is how we happened on the historic Jinshui camp mountain trail that once provided East-West passage through the Southern mountains of Taiwan. A day trip into the mountains three weeks ago seeded the idea to traverse this trail with the whole family. This weekend along with Joel and son Martin we made that happen.

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Tags: Children, Mountains, Travel by Stephen
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The cross-straits standoff of six decades added another rough chapter this last week. China’s chief cross-straits negotiator Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) met with Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in the highest level talks since the Communist and Nationalist war in 1949.

To demonstrate the absurdity of China-Taiwan relations, Chen and Ma finally managed to meet on the provision that Ma could be introduced as President of Taiwan and Chen would neither protest or acknowledge the “president” title for the leader of “the renegade province”. For neither protesting nor acknowledging, Taiwan now infers that China agrees to Ma’s “mutual non-denial” policy. That is, that both China and Taiwan will no longer pretend that the other doesn’t exist. So the diplomatic coup for Taiwan is “that China is not denying the mutual non-denial policy”.

And to reach that historic step the newly elected Taiwan government had to deploy an enormous police force to contain protests, stop display of the Taiwanese flag, and other patriotic actions. They have simultaneously run a political witch-hunt and detained, without charge, a number of the opposition party. Many feel they have taken an “improve economic ties with China” mandate to regress civil rights, oppress the opposition and quietly return Taiwan to China. Most seem too apathetic to care.

But all is not lost. Though political, social and economic control may be sliding westward, thanks to 50 years of an obsessive concrete fixation, a speedy physical relocation of Taiwan to China still remains unlikely.

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Tags: Mountains, Taiwan by Stephen
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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.

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Tags: Mountains by Stephen
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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.

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Tags: Mountains, Travel by Stephen
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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.

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Tags: Mountains, Taiwan, Travel by Stephen
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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.

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Tags: Mountains, Taiwan by Stephen
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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 →]

Tags: Mountains, Taiwan by Stephen
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