Seuss Hike

We got a day off for the Dragon Boat Festival today and I have to say, I've been in enough crowds and seen enough boats in my life and I was really looking forward to spending the free Wednesday afternoon in the great outdoors. Fortunately for me, Caleb had his eye on the same prize and led us to one of the most amazing places in Taipei.

Yangmingshan National Park is a vast mountainous area north of Taipei where people of all ages and skill levels can enjoy a beautiful walk through steep terrain or lush grassy hills. The key feature for us was Taiwan's tallest active volcano which we were able to summit on our first foray into the park.

The trail begins at a small parking lot which we arrived at by bus from the visitor's center. It begins, with no ado, straight into a nearly vertical climb where using both hands and feet was a necessity. The path is cut straight through grass fields so thick that if you were to throw a baseball at the wall of reeds blocking both sides, it would bounce right off. The silver grass, which this area is known for, dominates the landscape with a nearly unrivaled stranglehold on the mountain.

As we began our ascent, the smell of sulfur began to billow over us from the gaping fumarole on the side of Seven Star Mountain (Cising peak), which is actually a volcano. The ridge, which the trail snakes across, brings you to within a few yards of the northern edge of the gigantic fumarole and the steam pouring out creates the feeling of standing at the end of the production line at the factory for clouds. Very smelly clouds.

We kept on up the trail and came across smaller fumaroles which were also blowing their fair share of sulfur gas. Some of which were even built right into the trail, as if the creators had wanted hikers to feel the heat of the volcanic rock beneath their feet so as to better understand the magnitude of hiking on a volcano.

Though we were gaining a lot of elevation, thick fog made only the immediate landscape visible. It felt like walking through a Dr. Seuss story land and we quickly found ourselves immersed in the majesty of the windswept glades.

The peak of the mountain, the highest in the park, was choked off by the clouds and we couldn't see more than a hundred meters down the hillside and knew nothing of what lay beyond. It was a very cool feeling though, being cut off from the world at that mountain top, and it still felt like an esteemed accomplishment to reach the 1,120 meter peak. As we sat down to take a rest, we were bombarded with massive bumblebees the thickness of a Pollack's thumb. Despite being genetic monsters, they had a difficult time with the rough winds at the top of the volcano and crash landed all around us with a discernible thud.

Coming down the Eastern face of the mountain provided the scenic views we had been waiting for and we took many moments from our incredibly steep, and slippery, descent to slake our thirsts at the well of wonder that was our surroundings. Bucolic hillsides gave way to bone crunching drops which pockmarked the land and filled in their bases with water; something which is of no short supply here. The ground here has no chance of finding itself touched by light because every last morsel is covered with vine, tree, grass or fern.

Once down to the base of the volcano, we found a trail to one of the notable waterfalls in the area. Along the way, we noticed that there was a small trodden footpath leading to the edge of the stream which fed the waterfall and decided, with great enthusiasm, that we would do a little river tracing.

Now, it must be mentioned that there were a few signs in the area about poisonous snakes, which we had seen before, but we didn't think we would ever really find one in the wild. After tracing down the river maybe fifty yards, I stopped to get a picture of Caleb and Mike (The newest member of Shane School's in Sansia) and positioned myself on a rock to get the shot. While I fiddled with exposure setting Caleb yelled down: "Dude! Brian, snake, man, watch out!" I instantly flinched and looked around before noticing a small, mud brown snake sunning itself on a rock in the middle of the river about four feet to my left. It was certainly a wake up call and we had our eyes peeled for the rest of the journey.

The men at the visitor's center at the base of Seven Star mountain informed us that the last bus out of that area of the park left at 6:30, so we traced on eagerly but the thought of a clock ticking down registered with all of us. We made our way through the slick boulder stream and splashed about amply while grasping for footing. At one point, Mike was picking his way down a waterfall and let out a shriek, it was another snake, larger than the last, coiled up on a rock that he was just about to jump to. We took a moment to check it out and give it space before continuing down river.

At about the same time we were beginning to get a little anxious about ever making it back to the trail, we noticed a tributary of water flowing in from the right, the same side as our trail. I decided the best way to find the trail would be to follow that stream to it's source, which I felt must be the waterfall that we were after in the first place. This turned out to be correct and we managed to climb safely back onto the main path to the bemusement of a few Taiwanese tourists who were taking in the sights. Having just climbed out of the river, soaking wet, we felt that it wouldn't be too much bother to hop over the railing to reach the base of the falls which were about twenty meters from the path.

We scrambled over the wet rocks and reached the pool where forty feet of cascading water had made a deep hole in which to swim around. Noticing our idea, a group of Taiwanese guys followed us to the waterfall and even took some pictures for us. I think we had started a trend.

After standing beneath the skin tingling torrent and taking our photos, we hopped back out of the water for the last time and took a few "Rockstar" shots with some people on the trail who were keen to have a photo with white guys and trudged up the the last two kilometers of our hike to catch the bus.

Unfortunately, the bus was already gone. Caleb had managed to find this out from a Taiwanese woman who spoke English very well and told us that one more bus was going to leave, but it wasn't the one we had wanted. We sat at the bus stop, resigned to our fate of catching whatever bus we could, as she climbed into a luxurious tinted blue Porsche Cayenne Turbo (Porsche's SUV) and circled the parking lot. I remarked aloud, "I wish we were leaving in that instead of a bus." A minute later, they pulled up right in front of us and asked if we wanted a ride. I couldn't make this shit up.

We tried to show them how dirty and wet we were, thinking that would deter their kindness, but they politely insisted and hopped out to open the back door for us to pile in. It turned out that they all spoke wonderful English and their daughter, in the front seat, was home for summer vacation from New York where she attends Columbia University.

I asked her father, who I was sitting next to in the backseat, what he did for work. He explained, vaguely, that he owned an importing company but that business was not going very well right now. I guess owning a Porsche and sending a daughter abroad to attend a prestigious university is considered "struggling" in Taipei.

Another amazing outdoor adventure and another unbelievable act of charity by the locals. You cannot ask for anything better, especially out of a Wednesday.