From Xizhi to Pingxi- 從汐止到平溪

People had tried to convince me of the folly of this trek, or had laughed in disbelief when I mentioned it to them.  They were Taiwanese though, and knew not the lengths some foreigners are willing to go for a bit of outdoor excitement.  Seven and a half hours of it, to be exact, from the top of Dajian Mountain in our own backyard all the way to Jingtong Station.  Seven and a half hours of crossing mountains in perfect weather.  It'd been six months, but I'd finally made good on the promise to myself that I'd make it past Sifenwei Mountain.

Our day begins around 7:30 am, Jaryd, Ash and I meeting in front of some government building.  The morning is sunny, yet the heat hasn't had time to set in, and we manage the first leg of the journey up Big Sharp Mountain with minimal difficulty.  This is probably the most we'll have to work on the entire trip.  After stepping onto the natural path towards Sifenwei Mountain, Jaryd decides to take off his shoes and walk the way God intended, enjoying the smooth, hard-packed earth beneath his feet.  I join him after a bit, the cool ground heavenly against my soles.  The trail is barely rougher than the tiled floor of my apartment, and contains far fewer pubes.  Ash joins us, and for a while all three of us bewilder the Taiwanese hikers we pass.  We run into a pair of older women picking young ferns, nodding approval at our barefoot trek.  They hand us each a small sprig from their harvest, which I chew on thoughtfully.  It has a taste reminiscent of arugula, though less spicy, and leaving the same sticky residue that okra does.  Apparently the leaves can be mixed up in a salad, or made into a soup as a remedy for intestinal bloating.

At the wooden steps my shoes come back on, as I don't relish walking on hard, angled boards.  Jaryd's still going strong, even when the trail becomes overgrown with rocks and jutting roots.  We reach Sifenwei Mountain in good time, and take a short break at the ridge top meadow, enjoying Sunday in the best way possible, the sun shining, the air pristine.  Near the end of our snack break I see a foreigner walking up the slope towards us.  Motioning to the others I flick my head, "White dude."  Jaryd recognizes this particular white dude as one of the teachers at Nangang Hess.  Hess, the inescapable presence in Taiwan; I swear, it makes an already small Taiwan seem like a college campus.  In this case, though, Clay is a quality guy, and he hikes with us for a ways before he's forced to turn back, duty with the in-laws calling.

Into uncharted territory

Stepping off of Sifenwei, I'm taking my first steps into uncharted territory.  Laughably, we hit the road almost immediately.  A map by the trail tries to fool us into thinking north is in the direction of Pingxi (it's SE), but is otherwise pretty clear.  Contrary to what Pasta-G guy thinks, it looks like we're not getting lost, not easily anyway.  The tall grass that looked so plain last visit has, like the grass atop the Taoyuan trail, sprouted golden fronds, framing the background view of mountains between Xizhi, Shiding, and Pingxi.  Thankfully, the hike is much the same as that towards Sifenwei, a blessed lack of steps, the occasional stint of ropes, and plenty of moss-covered rocks.  With a 7.5 hour hike you're going to see some variation in mountain flora and topography.  We pass through overgrown meadows and bamboo forests in addition to thick jungle, sweating little on the shaded path.  As we climb up towards our first peak, firmly within the Xizhi-Pingxi mountains, the right side of the trail drops off dramatically.  Anyone who steps off that side will experience terror short-lived, before their body cannons into a tree.  Once we're on the ridge line we're hardly exerting ourselves, the path running flat for the most part, as if we were simply on a morning stroll through the park.  I'm reminded of Bilbo taking his constitutionals through Hobbiton, walking stick in hand.  Wait, walking stick?  Holy shit, I think Bilbo was Taiwanese.  Taking short hikes for his health, then sitting down to an excellent spread?  Definitely sounds Taiwanese to me.

Mt. Erkonggui comes and goes without fanfare, as there's nothing to mark it, and a definite lack of the dramatic vistas we've been privy to.  In fact, while I'm still wondering when we're going to hit its peak, we blunder across these two monoliths:

One person online thought these were vestiges of Japan's occupation, marking some kind of police checkpoint.  Don't know what purpose these stone towers would serve for a checkpoint, seems like a waste of time and stone.  Ash spots a sign in Chinese, and we find out the towers' real purpose: support pillars for a wheel and pulley system transporting coal.  Before the existence of the 106 Highway connecting Muzha to Jingtong, coal mined in Shiding and Wukeng, and coke refined in the outlying areas of Erkonggui was transported across the Erkonggui saddle by way of cable down to Xizhi, where it was then wheeled by pushcar to a steel smelting factory.  We rest here in the company of relics from an industry long gone, then push on to Peak 581.

We must be gaining in elevation, because Taiwanese cedars starts to crop up, first in ones and twos, and then swaths of them occupy the mountainside.  I'm excited by their presence, and the beautiful brown-red bark that makes such a delightful contrast against the other mossy-grey trees.  Climbing up we see still more variety in tree biology.  Beautiful Madrones, looking for all the world like wistful dryads, reach upward in thin, elegant tendrils, their smooth skin tanned a perfect brown.  I come across a tree with an interesting bark pattern, learning much later that it's a sycamore.  In the low altitude mountains you never really leave the jungle, so it's surprising to find the variety of tree life here in hot, humid Taiwan.

The top of Peak 581 also fails to have any appreciable view, but it does have a map that sends us veering off to the east.  Our destination is a temple, from where we'll hit up a cave, and then descend to Erkeng Village and the train stop.

"Breast-groping lane saddle"

Ash making music with some grass

At this point, the hike is starting to tax my endurance, but I laugh at the claims of difficulty by the hiking blogs.  Anybody could do this hike, there's no challenging ropes, no unassisted scrambles up bare ridges.  All that's necessary to make the Xizhi-Pingxi trek is patience, an appreciation of beauty, and plenty of food and water.

After a while, we see the road, and Jaryd thinks we missed the correct route, because if there's a temple ahead, we don't see it.  I stop and ask an old man farming his plot of land below for directions to the temple.  He looks at me blankly then points south, "Pingxi," repeating the action north, "Xizhi."  Awesome.  Who needs a map with directions like these?  On the road proper, there's a small shrine directly in front of us and-

-wait, I've been here before.

Xizhi

Pingxi

Holy shit, I've totally been here before!  This is the furthest point I traveled when riding Ryan and Katie's deathtrap after the Jiangziliao hike.  Here's the trail marker, the small shrine right by the road...wait.  Is this the temple?  This tiny shrine...is the temple on the map?  Well, with that figured out we orient ourselves once more.  The old man's directions turn out to be a little less provincial than I thought, because we're actually right on the boundary between Xizhi and Pingxi.  Like literally on the line.  We hop back on a lower branch of the Ancient Jingtong Trail and follow it down.  All the points of attraction turn out to be little lame.  Roubanka is just an upthrust cliff that's inaccessible, and the cave is little more than an enclosed morass.  We keep heading down, and at one fork, I suddenly stop, a sense of familiarity sweeping in.

Ah, fuck dat

Another cave further ahead, just as muddy.

Me: "Wait.  Is this the way to that one peak we did with all the stairs?"
Jaryd: "Yep."
Me: "Well, hot damn.  That's where we are!"

So then, if the entrance from Jingtong is at Erkeng...then Erkeng was that tiny village we passed through with the abandoned buildings.  Cool, let's check out how they're doing:

Uh, that was fast.

Our last visit, for reference.

Before long we're at Jingtong Station, completing our 7.5 hour and countless km trek across the mountains.  Your average Taiwanese person might think we're crazy, but it's memories of this cool, breathtaking hike that'll keep me content during the long rainy season that's on its way.

Edit: I'll be getting a picture of the maps Jaryd and Ash took eventually (my camera's resolution is too low).  You'd think all the other blogs would've taken pictures of the maps that are distributed throughout the hike instead of fashioning their own crude examples.  Perhaps they hadn't been installed yet.

Gongziliao Fort, Jilong- 槓子寮砲台, 基隆

Jaryd and I don't teach until 6:40 on Tuesdays, so we decided to hit up a fort in Keelung he'd been to previously with his girlfriend.  The hike itself is neither challenging nor long, and close enough that we'd waste little time in transit.  We'd have a chance to enjoy the outdoors and be back well before our evening class begun, breaking up the monotony of an English teacher's weekly routine.  This particular day the sun beat down with an oppressiveness reminiscent of summer, the heat sinking deep below the skin.  Foolishly, I had brought a long sleeve shirt, somehow convinced it would be cool at noon on a sunny day.  The shirt stayed firmly wound around my waste, never once pressed into service.

The hike to Gongziliao Fort starts behind National Taiwan Ocean University (海大), right behind the men's dorms.  The college is accessible by the 101, 103, and 104 buses from Keelung Station.  We take the right branch of the circuit route, hoping to catch some sweet archery on the way back.  The trail consists of simple, ugly concrete steps, though the trail side is adorned with signs pointing out various flora.  I am surprised to find myself sweating far more heavily than our previous hike, the burden of heat-resistant skin having sloughed away in anticipation of fall.  There are a wealth of maps and signs to point you in the right direction, and even if you get lost, no one branch goes on for longer than a kilometer.  The path to the fort forks left soon after a plain brown gazebo overlooking northern Keelung.

Below the main battlement you're introduced to the remnants of a few barracks.  I puzzle over the stones laid down in the center of one ruin; Jaryd suggests they might have been part of the foundation that's since crumbled away.  Arched brick windows speaks to an element of refinement in the Japanese construction of the fort, Japan already painfully aware of the pressing need to modernize.  A sense of melancholy strikes me.  At one time this place must've been privy to the boisterous joking common to soldiers, to rumors spread about people we'll never know.  Now the breeze whispers through halls empty save for a lone spider, dangling beneath cracked mortar.

Further up you see munition depots, as well as storage tunnels carved into the side of the mountain.  Armed with cellphone flashlights, weak but serviceable, we manage to navigate the tunnels to their respective exits and dead-ends.  One branch leads out to a viewpoint, well-covered and providing an unobstructed view down to the harbor.  Striking an incongruous note in all this military efficiency, a beautiful lavender hibiscus tree grows near the cave opening, transforming a utilitarian look-out into the grotto of a reclusive Mediterranean sorceress.

Entrance to the tunnels.  Straight out of the first Diablo.

The viewpoint from the tunnels.

Jaryd, King of the Faeries

We explore every possible branch of the tunnels, coming across a sleeping bat, monstrous spiders, and some multi-legged monstrosity we don't recognize (edit: a house centipede).  Never mind the couples who come for the vistas of the Keelung coast, it's a safe bet Japanese soldiers didn't relish going inside these caves.  None of the dead-ends contain any lost war relics, and we leave before our nerves get the better of us.

An exit to the road

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scutigera_coleoptrata

After the caves we take a steep staircase up to the main battlements.  Like any elevated fort we have a commanding view of the land around us.  Keelung Bay sparkles below, much more appealing out of smell's reach.  The east coast stretches out into the distance, and one can see Jinguashi close by, nestled within the mountains.  One of the charms of Taiwan is how one can, with the necessary elevation, look from one conquered adventure to the next.  It instills a sense not only of accomplishment, but of intimacy.

Swinging away from the view we find a pair of rotating 9mm cannons at the top of the ridge.  You can still see the rusted tracks the guns must've swung on, as well as alcoves to store additional shells, facilitating reloading.  Nearby, there's a metal-lined chute, what must've been used to discard spent shells.  I can't imagine them passing up shells through such a deep, narrow hole, but maybe they utilized some long-handled tool.  Steps from the guns lead down to the storage unit the hole connects to.

Near the other gun, there's a lookout bunker.  There's a hole in the grass by the second gun, and Jaryd thinks it links the gun with the bunker, a way for the lookout to rapidly communicate necessary adjustments without leaving his post.  The sign does talk about pottery speaker equipment installed between the cannons.  While I take pictures of the surrounding land, Jaryd steps inside the bunker and after the fucker shoots me down with mind bullets I climb down through the opening to join him.  A somber-eyed basset-hound stumping along immediately draws my attention.  His Taiwanese owner smiles at me as I pet him.  "His name's Buddy.  He's just a stupid dog."  I laugh awkwardly at this casual display of affection.

Look closely and you can see Buddy the basset-hound.

Meandering down a grassy slope, we find a long, flat area people use for paragliding.  Not really sure where people land, as there's not much beyond dock and water below.  Looking behind us up at the fort, I appreciate the subtle architecture of the gun mounts; the whole battlement seems to blend in to the mountainside.  We see some structures up ahead, and the best we can guess are they served as vehicle garages, since a pair of parallel concrete tracks runs up to one.

Stepping off the ridge, we walk down the path where six 28mm howizters once sat.  I imagine how the guns looked, occupying enormous holes now filled with dirty water and lily pads.  With the mountainside towards the bay steep and thickly forested, a frontal assault by foot to seize the battery would have been impractical, especially considering there's little beach to land on; it would be left to the ships to knock out this fort.  Due to the excellent cover and protection provided by the recessed artillery, any ships in the harbor would've had to score a direct hit shooting blindly up the side of a mountain, and given the hell raining down on them, the window for that success would have been narrow indeed.  China inherited this fort from the Japanese after the Russo-Japanese War, renovating it between 1900 and 1908.  They too would abandon it, however, so it seems the fort saw little fighting.  I know Keelung was bombed by the Americans during WWII, but obviously this fort would've had little application against air.  Probably the reason it's so well preserved.

The path back is straightforward and takes little time.  I see more wildlife on this hike than any other trail: several butterflies, an enormous grasshopper about the size of a snickers bar, and a dead mole.  Right after the mole, while chatting about some weighty matter, Jaryd and I are startled by rustling to the right. An enormous snake darts between us, brown and black and thicker around than my bicep, coiling in an S-pattern.  Jaryd hollers something unintelligible and I barely have the presence of mind to hop back, my shrieking the envy of Bieber fans everywhere.  After the snake goes slithering down the side of the mountain I start laughing manically.  Jaryd stops speaking in tongues and is convulsing with laughter too.  As close as the snake came to me, and it did come close, I was too busy dancing around to get a close look at its coloring.  We believe it was a Russel's Pit Viper though; these snakes are seen during the day when the weather gets cooler, found in woodlands, and can strike very quickly, often at shadows, though they only grow to be about 4 ft. in length. This guy was easily over five feet, maybe even closer to six, though I must remember that excitement often leads to hyperbole.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daboia

You read the part where it says, "These snakes are responsible for the most deaths worldwide out of all venomous snakes," right?  God, I hope it was this snake.  It'd be like spitting in Death's eye.  While pissing myself.  Not exactly heroic, but still admirable.

Jaryd's peering at the brush with every step, and I too feel an anxiety gripping at my chest.  His comments about the whole incident are comically pertinent:

"After all the hiking we do, this is the hike where we see the giant snake?  Not the eight hour hike from Xizhi to Pingxi, oh no, no snakes there.  No, it's the one close to civilization, RIGHT BY A FUCKING COLLEGE, where we see the giant snake."

Luckily, the archery field is nearby, and we get off the trail with a palpable sense of relief.  This relief quickly becomes frustration when we see the what's taking place in front of the targets.

"WHAT THE FUCK?!"

Two girls already made nervous by the presence of foreigners start giggling at my outburst.  Clearly, rage crosses all borders of language.  I am not pleased with the herd of casual golfers driving a crossfire of balls right in front of where I'm supposed to be sending shafts, like the hero I am.

I turn to Jaryd.  "This is bullshit."  More hushed giggling.  GOLFING?!  I ask a man what the deal is and he says archery only goes on in the evening.  What's wrong with you heathens?  Golfing should never supplant archery.  EVER.  With our dreams of sweet bow hunting shot down we head back to Xizhi, and worn out from the heat of the day, we fall asleep en route.   Would've been nice to get some archery practice in; I might start carrying around a bow if anything larger decides to fuck with me.