Pretensions is using the X’mas break to catch up with some way overdue blogging, including the chronicling of her day at the Yangmingshan National Park in Taiwan on the Saturday following her Hong Kong Victoria Peak walk.

Yangmingshan National Park (YMS NP) is only an hour and a half’s bus ride from Taipei and is the ideal place to visit to get back to Nature and away from the bustling hordes of the Taiwanese capital. Unfortunately on sunny days, the bustling hordes of Taipei also make a beeline for the cooler mountains and some of the easier paths in particular can be swamped with visitors.

After a busy week of campus meetings and intercity bus rides, P was definitely ready for some gentle hiking and vistas more scenic than a conference room.

YMS, for those not familiar with it, consists of about 11,455 hectares of semitropical mountainous woodland, taking in several low mountains/hills, including Mounts Tatun, Chihsing (Qixing), Wuchih, Hsiangtien etc with the highest elevation being about 1,120 metres above sea level. The park was named after Ming dynasty philosopher, Wang Yangming. P had gone with the intention of doing the trail to Qixingshan (Seven Stars Mountain), a climb that was rumoured to take a total of 3-4 hours up and down (from the bus stop at Hsiaoyukeng). She also intended to visit a few of the more scenic areas of the Park, which were readily accessible thanks to a comprehensive system of shuttle buses that wend their way between the trail heads.

After acquiring a decent map at the Visitor’s Centre (itself an hour’s hike from the public bus route),  P took one of the park shuttles to her first stop, Erzihping. Erzihping was more in the way of a warm-up for the main climb, being a gentle snaking 2km trail through the woods to an artificial lake. The great thing about it was the wheelchair access – there was a cement trail paralleling the main one that was suitable for wheelchair users and a fair number of elderly Taiwanese were perambulating along both the “easy” trail and the main one.

P arrived at the trail head at about 9:30am on a morning after a heavy rain, so there was still heavy fog around the markers. (This was why she didn’t start directly on the Qixingshan climb.)

The walk was an easy one, allowing P ample opportunity to admire the subtropical flora.

Silhouette of subtropical tree fern
Bauhinia flower closeup (click for larger view)
Fern fiddlerheads
Dewey Flower (anyone know what this is? Click for larger view)
Pines blowing in the breeze

I eventually reached Erzihping lake, which is a very pretty sight, as it lies in the shadow of several mountains. This shot shows the trails in the location.

The lake itself was filled with blooming waterlilies and mating frogs – wonderful!

	Waterlilies
	Waterlily closeup (click for larger view)
	Frog orgy (click for larger view)
	Tadpoles

P had a quick picnic Bento lunch by the waterlilies and made tracks back to the trailhead.

After Erzihping, P took a bus to the Qixingshan trailhead as she was worrying about making it up and down before dark. This peak is the highest one in the Park and is a strenuous climb up, quite a change from the Erzihping trail. It is in an area of volcanic hot springs and sulfur fumaroles so the trail head was wreathed in hot mist, making the first few hundred metres quite an agonising vertical slog through a humid sulfur-stinking cloud (P isn’t very fit :-)). This pic shows the beginnings of the trail as it levels out above the sulfur fumes.

Here is another view of the trail that shows its steepness. This is the view from Hsiaoyukeng, another of the way stations on the way up Qixingshan. Look closely at the larger version of the pic and you can see the small band of hikers toiling up the mountain.

P had to stop and rest now and then and often encountered families and other hikers doing the same. Here is a Taiwanese couple resting. The caption on that photo looks like it should read “Haven’t they run out of mountain yet?”.

Still the scenery was fabulous as the trail often cut through areas of raw sulfur and smoking volcanic vents. Here are some of the better ones below.

Smoking volcanic vent
Closeup of volcanic vent
View from halfway up the trail
Sulfur bed (the yellow bits – click to larger view to see it better)
Scenic mountain vista(it needs a period hero posing with a bow or something)
The reward for all that climbing! (fantastic mid-afternoon view down the valley to Taipei city)

P’s legs were pretty wobbly by the time she descended to Hsiaoyukeng again and she decided to take the bus back down to Danshui for food at the famous night market (but that’s another post!).

For more wonderful pictures of Yangmingshan, please visit the official site and its photo gallery.

Related articles

• Getting away from it all while staying in Taipei
• Yangmingshan – Craig Fergson Images