Teapot Mountain- trail blazing like hapless idiots- 茶壺山

I anticipated the weather last Sunday with more concern than usual, since Ryan, Jaryd, Ash and I would be going out towards Jilong.  If it's raining anywhere on the island, it was already raining in Jilong, and harder.  I guess that makes Jilong the rain hipster of Taiwan.  Our destination was Teapot Mountain and Banping Trail, the ridgeline hike that followed it.  No rogue conductors impeded our travel to Ruifang, from where we bused to Jinguashi Gold Ecological Museum.  From the museum, a simple walk of fifteen minutes or so would take us to the entrance.  Or so we hoped.  

Arriving at the museum, I quickly realized a glaring oversight: though ample signage exists for the sights within the museum, no clear indication is given to where we might start our hike to Teapot Mountain.  Advice given by museum employees is unclear, with one woman telling us to follow the steps up to an old Japanese shrine.

Steps- no hike in Taiwan would be official without them.

We join groups of other tourists on the stairway.  I can hear quite a bit of Japanese mixed in with the Mandarin and Taiwanese.  The discovery of gold that transformed Jiufen from a sleepy village into a bustling town happened during Japanese colonization, and you can see this influence in much of the architecture in the area.  Naturally, many Japanese tourists feel drawn to this picturesque little town by the sea, especially older folk looking for a slice of home away from home.  Turning away from the steps, I'm afforded a tantalizing glimpse of the sea, only the beginning of what I'm sure are many more expansive views to come.

Although laboring up steps is non-stop fun, when Ryan discovers a tucked away side trail we seize the opportunity to break up the monotony, er fun, without really bothering to figure out where it will lead us.  Initially, this is an excellent choice.  The path, though visible, is little more than a narrow carpet of dead brush through a sea of silver grass, broken by wooded scrambles down crumbly moss-and-bark soil.  Though footing proves troublesome, we couldn't be happier.   Moving in concert with the ridge line above us, basking in nature, these things cry hiking more loudly than trudging up steps.

Bye-bye steps.

Look at Jaryd's face on the right.

Jaryd and Ryan think we're following a trail built specifically for laying a water pipe, a safe assumption since our path parallels one.  The path leads us down into the lowest point of the valley, where it ends at a small creek.  We stop here for food and water as we plot our next course, unanimous in our refusal to turn all the way back after this dead end.  At this point, it's either follow the river, which veers away from Teapot Mountain, or trail blaze straight up the ridge opposite.  Growing impatient with our extended break, I decide to do a bit of scouting, and quickly realize the climb up to the ridge line will not be easy.  A loose carpet of dead ferns and silver grass reinforced with living plants provides stable footing, before the sharply rising slope quickly leaves me with nothing but dead brush on top of loose dirt, and I find my feet sliding down the slope as quickly as I dig them into the crumbly soil.  When I can grab at the base of patches of silver grass, they prove surprisingly resilient.  Otherwise, I'm clutching onto fistfuls of dead vegetation and hoping I don't go tumbling off the side of the mountain.  As we climb up on all fours, breathing labored, the mountain taxes us in blood; thorns living and dead tear at our hands and feet while blades of tall grass lay open our arms and shoulders.

Camera wars

The beginning of the climb...

If that's the price you ask of me, Mountain, I gladly pay it.

Ash asks about an exit strategy as we sit partway up the ridge, resting on natural seats of broken grass.  I laugh and say, "Death.  We make it up, or we die."  Before he has time to respond, I'm already thinking of this scene at the end of The Last Starfighter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6U7rOUSvYM8

Roaring with laughter, I tell him we'll be fine.  We have plenty of food, and a general sense of where we are.  With that, we're back on our feet.  The silver grass, by now towering over us, makes our ascent particularly challenging.  When stocks of grass come out of the hillside at chest height, it's particularly hard to forge a trail through them.  What happens when you use your hands to plow through a dense tangle of grass, hands that should be supporting your climb up?  You start falling on your face, the task of extrication made doubly difficult when you're resting upside down on springy paper-cut dispensers.  I fall down three times in quick succession while leading the charge upward, feeling the strength draining from my limbs each time I haul myself up.  Ryan is doubled over laughing at my buffoonery and I realize someone else needs to set the pace before I kill myself.  Jaryd takes point and I'm able to relax.  I point out we're close to the top, and everybody else says I said the same thing thirty minutes ago.  "Yeah, but look how high up we are in relation to the other mountains."  We've gained noticeable elevation in a short time, inevitable given the pace and incline we've been going at.  We keep pushing up, clusters of trees providing a break from the endless grass.  It feels good to put our feet on bare soil.  Ash hears some people coming off to the right, faintly, but we write him off, too busy planning a route up.  Then I see the people Ash heard.

Me: "Dude, there ARE people really close by!  Look!"
Jaryd: "Where?"
Ryan: "Oh yeah, I see them."
Ash: "That's what I was telling you guys!"
Ryan: "I'm pretty sure you did NOT tell us that."
Jaryd: "I still can't see them."
Ash: "I totally did."
Ryan: "Pft, stop trying to take the credit.  If anything, I remember one of the Americans saying something about voices."
Me: "See, right straight up through the opening in the grass."
Jaryd: "Ah, I see them now!"

And the end of it...yeah, sorry.  Too busy trudging through uphill hell to take pictures.

Good-natured joking aside, the relief at seeing other hikers is palpable.  Seeing our green-blue hell ending in the rocks just below the ridge line instills us with new vigor.  Climbing up the rocks, we run straight into a group of young Taiwanese, marveling aloud at our grizzled appearances.  In fact, I'm happy to report that my grit portfolio enjoyed gains of no less than 103% that day.  This particular group had gotten turned around three times; it was good to see we weren't the only ones getting lost.  We take an extended break atop the ridge, admiring the rock formations around us, as well as the quickly moving mist that has us completely enveloped.  Unfortunately, as high up as we are, the mist shows no signs of dispersing, and visions of 360 degree vistas atop the mountain are quietly shelved for future visits.  With the whole world around us a muted white, we're cut off from everything; the only thing with meaning is the path immediately in front of us, a path much welcome after our extended crawl through wilderness.  I feel as springy as the grass surrounding us, like I'm going to bounce off the mountain if I go too hard.  After a brief descent down a narrow rock chute, we notice with some dismay that the path seems to be heading back down towards the bottom of the valley, though with the mist we can't be sure.  We convince ourselves that we're on the wrong path, yet take it because we have no option.  I'm pissed to think all that slogging up the hillside might be for naught, especially when the mist prevents us from using that most basic navigation tool- our eyes.  Just when I accept that our hike was still a lot of fun, teapot or no, the murky outline of a mountain comes into a view.  I start laughing, recognizing the outline of Teapot Mountain.  Finally, something goes right!

Finally, Teapot Mountain.

Teapot Mountain is like a teapot in more than just physical appearance.  Small chimneys worm through the structure of the rock, allowing all manner of exploration.  Obvious deposits of sulfur line the side of these holes, pointing to a teapot once bubbling and steaming.  We find a party of Taiwanese resting on a jutting spire of rock, and wonder why they aren't at the top.  The leader of their party points at the rope, heavily frayed from the climate and extended use.  Pass.  He mentions an alternate way up around the corner, just as dangerous, which I write off as typical Taiwanese caution until I see the 'way up' is simply a vertical rock climb.  Ah yah, fuck dat too.

We content ourselves with climbing in and around Teapot Mountain, taking loads of pictures, and descending right when the mist begins to clear.  Ok, now for the Banping Trail...right?  After talking with an older hiker, we learn that we've essentially done our planned hike backwards- that is, we had hiked up to the Banping Trail from our little bushwhacking detour, and ended at Teapot Mountain.  There was no ridge line trail from here, we'd already done it.  Well, part of it.  All that remained was walking back down to the road towards the gold museum and figuring out how badly we had fucked up.  Before long, we find a stairway from the road that quickly takes us back to the museum proper.  Like, a really obvious stairway that we would've seen ourselves if we hadn't blindly relied on others.  Next time, next time.

Checking out the damage

I take a detour off the staircase to bathe in a mountain creek and the others follow suit.  Remembering I'm wearing my fancy ExOfficio Super Adventure Club underwear, I strip to my briefs and look for a way down the steep boulders to the water below.  Then I notice the natural slide carved into the rock.  Tempting, but how I do know how smooth it really is?  I climb back up to find the others throwing rocks at me, for some fucking reason.  They probably can't get enough of my sexy ass.  After finding out the reason for my absence, I'm dared to take the waterslide I was going back and forth on.  Ah, goddamit you guys.  Laughing, I agree, as long as someone takes a video.  Ash busts out his phone and it's off to the races.  The slide turns out to be smooth riding, and I fly into the water laughing like a little kid.  The climb up is the tricky part, and Ryan hurries to offer a helping hand.  As I'm climbing across on a branch that might or might not snap, Ryan reels back in surprise, getting a face-full of ass courtesy of the twin rips my underwear now sports.  Underwear for true adventurers?  Thanks, you fucking yuppies.  Some tourists at the museum make note of our antics, and I wave back to them heartily.  No sense being bashful.

The waterslide

The trip back home is halted by a glut of cars in narrow-laned Jinguashi.  Apparently some asshole(s) are blocking traffic, and the mist, even thicker by now, doesn't help.  We squeeze carefully down a road never intended to hold two buses at once, and even with the driver's experienced maneuvering, we can't help but bump roughly into the railing once, causing several people to erupt in shrieks.  This is particularly amusing, and breaks up the boredom from sitting on the road...for a bit.

As the hour is late, we decide to skip coffee in quaint Jiufen, and just train directly home.  Standing on the train, I'm aware of every cut across my hands and legs, and acutely aware of just how sodden and gross I feel.  Spraying my arms down with overpowering deodorant eases my guilt over stinking up the cabin, and we're lucky to avoid any twenty minute stops to let the express train roar by.  Ryan continues on to Xike, while Ash, Jaryd and I discuss plans for the next trip to Jiufen over steaming hot bowls of the best beef noodles in Xizhi.  Suddenly I realize I've drunk no tea for the entire day.  Somehow, this thought makes me smile.