If you want to see a different side of Yangmingshan (陽明山), Taipei Hikers will be climbing up Datun Stream (大屯溪), which is located in a more secluded corner of Yangmingshan National Park next Saturday. The group will meet at 8am at Tamsui MRT, and participants must register for a spot beforehand on the Taipei Hikers Meetup site.
The hike, which will be led by longtime Taipei expat and guidebook writer Richard Saunders, will consist of four to five hours of constant climbing, which requires a good level of fitness and some prior river tracing experience.
For those unfamiliar with the activity, river tracing is walking up a stream in the mountains towards the source, normally a waterfall.
Photos courtesy of Richard Saunders
“The one we’ll be doing [next weekend] is quite easy, with no major obstacles, although we will be climbing lots of small cascades and rapids, and swimming across small but sometimes deep pools,” Saunders tells the Taipei Times.
As such, proper footwear with felt soles is also required, and can be purchased from most outdoor sporting shops. Other equipment — waterproof bag, life vest and helmets — are optional.
Saunders founded Taipei Hikers in 2002 while writing his second book, Taipei Day Trips 2. The idea was to get a group together to go on a couple of hikes to make sure that the directions in his book were clear enough to follow.
“We had such fun exploring the 30 walks in the book as a group, that after the book was published, I continued organizing walks,” says Saunders.
The group has since grown to over 3,500 members, with about 10 members regularly leading hikes. In the summer months, the group does mostly river traces, because it gets pretty hot — and the waters can be surprisingly chilly.
Saunders is glad to see that hiking has grown to become a more popular activity over the last decade.
“People have had more free time since the two-day weekend was introduced,” he says.
The proliferation of hiking blogs that include details about “hidden” spots and GPS logs of routes have made it easier to explore the nation’s river systems.
Saunders says he loves the area near the upper Keelung River valley and the hills above the northeast coast, as well as the mountains in Chiayi County (嘉義). For river tracing, he adds that Golden Grotto (黃金峽谷) in Hualien (花蓮) “reigns supreme.”
Four years ago, Taipei Hikers started doing international trips. The first one was a climb in a couple of sacred Buddhist and Taoist mountains in China. Since then, they’ve also trekked through the jungles of Malaysian Borneo and climbed Mount Rinjani, an active volcano on the Indonesian island of Lombok. They’re also planning a trip next year to the European Alps.
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