Hiking and River Tracing in Fushan
Blog: Snarky Tofu - 1 June 2009
By: Joshua Samuel Brown
Went on an amazing hike Friday with Tammy and Phil,Laurie and Chris. Went up to Fushan, a mountain south of Wulai, which is itself on the northern end of the mountain range that forms the spine of Isle Formosa. Readers who still somehow have the impression of Taiwan as being a gigantic metroplex / semiconducter factory, something like a cross between Donguan, China and Tokyo's Ginza, will be greatly illuminated by having a gander at Phillip's page of photos from the trip.
Purchased the day before for under NT500 at a shop just east of Taipei main station, the river booties proved critical in navigating the chilly, fast moving river. Phillip, Chris and I traced about a kilometer up the river and floated back down. For me, this short run was just a test-trace, as I plan to come back and travel more of the river later this summer.
After about an hour, we'd had our lunch and were lounging on the rocks when a small group of Atayal warriors came floating down the river towards us brandishing homemade spear guns.
The Atayal are headhunters, and I know they wouldn't be satisfied with anything less than some gory trophy for the alter. I bravely swam out to them to offer my own head; luckily, these tribesmen were pacifists, or at least kindly disposed towards us. (The Taiwanese fishermen who'd been casting on the rocks directly south from us beat a hasty retreat shortly after the warrior's arrival. There has long been bad blood between Aboriginals and Han Chinese.) One of them demonstrated his spear-gun, an ingenious device.
The men had come to this beach to camp for the night, and brought chunks of raw mountain boar to stew alongside the Formosan mountain carp they'd been skewing in the river. As they settled in for the evening, we headed back towards the casa of P&T and a dinner of strong coffee and stronger cheeses.
Again, many, many fine photos of the day can be found here.
After meeting at the Xindian station after dawn, we headed up to Wulai for a quick breakfast and then motored south on what once was a logging road built by the Japanese. The area is a protected preserve, so we had to pass through a checkpoint and show identification. The road wound south through high mountains, waterfalls cascading from the peaks above into the gorge far below.
After parking the van in a suitable spot, we headed up a stone staircase. The stairs led us to a rough path, the Fu Ba Trail, which runs through a patch of jungle filled with long stands of running bamboo, trees old and young, and patches of edible flowers with names straight out of Grateful Dead songs. At one point we climbed over an unfinished metal bridge, the vast majority of which lay in chunks on the northern bank awaiting construction.
After hiking south for about an hour, we turned back and headed down a steep, unmarked path that led us to the river itself. It was hear that we stripped down to our swimsuits and strapped on our river-tracing boots (shown here)
Purchased the day before for under NT500 at a shop just east of Taipei main station, the river booties proved critical in navigating the chilly, fast moving river. Phillip, Chris and I traced about a kilometer up the river and floated back down. For me, this short run was just a test-trace, as I plan to come back and travel more of the river later this summer.
After about an hour, we'd had our lunch and were lounging on the rocks when a small group of Atayal warriors came floating down the river towards us brandishing homemade spear guns.
The Atayal are headhunters, and I know they wouldn't be satisfied with anything less than some gory trophy for the alter. I bravely swam out to them to offer my own head; luckily, these tribesmen were pacifists, or at least kindly disposed towards us. (The Taiwanese fishermen who'd been casting on the rocks directly south from us beat a hasty retreat shortly after the warrior's arrival. There has long been bad blood between Aboriginals and Han Chinese.) One of them demonstrated his spear-gun, an ingenious device.
The men had come to this beach to camp for the night, and brought chunks of raw mountain boar to stew alongside the Formosan mountain carp they'd been skewing in the river. As they settled in for the evening, we headed back towards the casa of P&T and a dinner of strong coffee and stronger cheeses.
Again, many, many fine photos of the day can be found here.
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