It was freezing near the top of the mountain, but that was the least of our troubles. A razor wind that had moments ago been ripping strands of mist over the jagged, slate peaks ahead of us had now brought with it a cloud bank so thick it was hard to see the trail a few meters ahead.
And then there was the earthquake damage: huge gaps in the trail gouged out by rockslides; loose scree and lone, restless boulders just waiting to be set in motion by the slightest tap or vibration.
It was this combination of factors that prompted our climbing guide, Yushan National Park Ranger Richard Chen, to take shelter from the wind in a rock crevice 300-meters from the summit of Yushan (Jade Mountain).
"It's too windy," he yelled. "If this doesn't break, we might have to turn back."
These were not the words we wanted to hear after a day and a half of climbing, especially considering that Taiwan's tallest summit now loomed tantalizingly close, just a scramble away. But because we were among the first climbers to try for the summit since the 921 earthquake, loose rocks and downed guide-chains meant it could be a dangerous scramble. So we sheltered behind a ledge and waited -- hoping that the weather would break before the bitter cold and late hour forced us to turn back.
An invitation to danger
Yushan is northeast Asia's tallest peak. Standing at 3,952 meters -- roughly 13,000 feet -- it is a broad-shouldered hulk of a mountain, the centerpiece of Yushan National Park, a rugged, mountainous region in central Taiwan dotted with more than 30 peaks higher than 3,000 meters.
By far the most pristine of Taiwan's parks, Yushan National Park is a national treasure. Relatively untouched, the park is one of the few conservation success stories in Taiwan's history. It also was almost at the epicenter of the devastating 921 earthquake.
I had been in touch with the park service on several occasions about doing a story on the state of the national park in the wake of the earthquake. But my pleas to be taken into the still-closed park had been fruitless. It wasn't until a day before the actual climb that the phone rang. It was Chen.
"Can you be at the ranger station in Shuili by tomorrow morning?" he asked. "I'm taking a guy to the top who wants to film a documentary about the damage the quake caused to the trail systems," Chen said. "If you can make it you're welcome to come along."
It wasn't until Chen got to the part about release forms that I started to realize that this might actually be dangerous. "You'll also need to bring a signed release form that frees the park from responsibility if anything ... bad should happen," Chen said.
"Bad?"
"Well, we have reports that the trail is in bad shape from the earthquake and there are some dangerous places," he explained. "Also, there is still the possibility of aftershocks. We'll provide hardhats, but there could be falling rocks."
After setting plans to meet Chen in Shuili, I rang Dr Chiu Hung-chie, a seismologist at Academia Sinica, to try to get a better picture of what I'd gotten myself into. The first thing I learned is that we would probably be climbing higher, by several meters, than we would have had we tried to climb Yushan Mountain before the earthquake.
"Yes, the mountain is taller now," Chiu explained. "The 921 earthquake was unique because it struck close to the earth's crust, causing major topical and geological changes."
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