Yangming Shan National Park

Taipei is located in a basin, and sits less then twenty metres above sea level.  As the crow flies, it is around twenty kilometres from the ocean.  Despite that, between Taipei and the coast the mountains shoot up to a height of over 1,000 metres.  The mountains between Taipei and the coast form the Datun Volcano Group (大屯火山群) within Yangming Shan National Park (陽明山國家公園 ).  The volcanoes are now all extinct, but there are still hot sulfur springs and sulfur fumaroles in the area.

When I was living in Taipei I would often go hiking in the national park.  The weather in Taipei is usually uniformly cloudy and smoggy, presumably exacerbated by the way it is situated within a basin, but on occasions I have hiked through fog to the top of the highest mountain in Yangming Shan National Park, Qixing Shan ("Seven-star Mountain" - 七星山) to emerge on top of a sea of cloud from which only the mountain-peaks around Taipei could be seen. 

We had Yangming Shan on our list of places that we wanted to take the  kids while we were there, and for the first week or so we were waiting for better weather to make the visit.  Eventually it became clear that a Taipei winter wasn't going to give us any better weather, so we just decided to go and see what our luck delivered with the conditions at the top of the mountains.  We caught the MRT across to Shilin (士林) then caught a bus up into the mountains.  At the end of the line for the normal city bus it was already sleeting and misty.  At the bus station a grumpy driver told us that the shuttle bus into the national park left every half hour, but cautioned that there wouldn't be anything to see and we should have wet-weather gear.  It's never a good sign when you start an expedition by making a mental note that you will need to confess to any subsequent coronial inquest that you were warned against it.  In my defense, I will say that I planned to stay in close touch with the route of the shuttle bus, and figured it would be difficult to actually die of hypothermia within the half-hour interval between buses.

There were just us and two others on the shuttle bus, and the trip along foggy roads was distinctly hair-raising.  No doubt the driver drove those roads a dozen times a day, every day of his life, and could probably drive them with his eyes closed, but the way he threw the bus around, through hair-pin mountain bends in the fog, was really nerve-wracking.  The impression was really assisted by the fact he appeared to have a nasty case of indigestion, and belched loudly every two minutes or so during our trip.  I was already apprehensive about taking the kids into the hiking conditions, but in the end it was actually a relief to get off the bus, out onto a foggy road in the middle of nowhere.  We found the entrance to the trail and walked a couple of kilometres to the next signpost, only to find that we had walked in completely the wrong direction for our objective.  At that stage the parental warning bells could no longer be ignored, and we decided to just wait there for the the next shuttle bus so that we could do something more sensible.

When the bus came we hopped on with the intention of going back to the bus station to go back down the mountains, but as we travelled around the circuit the geography started to fall into place and on impulse we hopped off at Xiaoyoukeng (小油坑 - "Little Oil Pit"), the site of the fumaroles.  It turned out that Xiaoyoukeng was only a stone's throw from the entrance to the trail up Qixing Shan - so in the past I must have hiked past Xiaoyoukeng literally dozens of times without noticing it.  I guess that can be one of the hazards of travelling by foot.  While travelling slowly and close to the ground can be good for noticing things on the way, it can mean that you might miss-out on something that it only a few hundred metres from your path - something you would easily have seen by driving a few seconds further.

Xiaoyoukeng is an old sulphur-mining area covered in fumaroles belching steam and sulphur dioxide into the air.  Because of the fog we didn't get a good view of the area, but were able to see a lot of smaller fumaroles up close - an interesting experience for the kids. I've put some videos of the fumaroles here and here.

After visiting the fumaroles we walked a few hundred metres up Qixing Shan, and got a couple of good views back down through the fog towards Xiaoyoukeng.  My hope was that the kids would get the experience of emerging from the top of the clouds, but we decided to bail-out due to the cold, the steepness of the track, and how slippery the trail was.  All-in-all an interesting and unusual day, but it was good to see the shuttle bus pull back in at the bottom of the Qixing Shan track for the trip back to the bus station.

Irresponsible parents take their children out to hike in foggy conditions on mountain paths.

An example of the sort of trails inside the national park.

Still smiling at this stage.

The mountain track up Qixing Shan, with a type of small bamboo forest.

On the way up Qixing Shan.

On the way up Qixing Shan.

From part way up Qixing Shan, looking back down on Xiaoyoukeng through the mist.

On the way up Qixing Shan.

An example of the occasional difficulties in relying on signs to find your way around Taiwan if you don't read Chinese.  The Chinese says "Xiaoyoukeng", while the transcription reads "Erziping" - a completely different place.