Faultline in the sky
An hour later, backlit by the light of dawn, Yushan's summit came into view. Out over the valley, large, ragged blankets of mist were sweeping our way. Still, Chen set an unhurried pace and we moved slowly across the random rockslides and around the downed boulders that appeared along the trail every hundred meters or so.
"The mountain moved," Chen explained as we stopped to munch chocolate and drink water. "That's why there is so much displacement of rock. But, still, we haven't had a good rain since the quake and I suspect that once we do and erosion sets in, the damage will get worse. Only after that will nature start to repair itself."
At the base of the summit we began the only part of the climb that can be considered even remotely technical. The clouds started building as we scrambled over rocks heading for the "Gate," a steel-and-net structure designed to take climbers along a windswept ridge to the summit without the risk of being blown off the mountain -- which has actually happened.
A large part of the Gate had been torn down by the quake and lay in a twisted heap halfway down a boulder-strewn slope. It was here that the wind kicked up and Chen pulled us into the crevice to take shelter. After about forty minutes, the wind died suddenly. We stood, shook the frost off our hands and feet and scrambled to the top.
By the time we reached the summit the wind had died, but the clouds were still thick, obscuring our view. A giant fissure had opened in the rock, bisecting the entire summit. We posed for photographs, our legs splayed over the fault -- one foot planted on the "hanging wall," one on the "foot wall." After two days of climbing, we'd gone as high as Taiwan would allow us, but still not beyond the reach of the earthquake that shook the island from bottom to very top.
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