2009-02-01 Hiking In Maokong

Today is the last day of Chinese New Year vacation, Patty, Kitty, Chris and his friend, and I went hiking in Maokong region. We started our hike at NCCU around 10:00 a.m. and took Tea Pickers Trail to Maokong. There weren't a lot of tourists because of Maokong gondola's breakdown. We arrived at Maokong station about 11:30. and had lunch at 小木屋 restaurant. After our lunch, we climbed up to Erjiaoge shan(鵝角格山) whose trail is steep way up to the ridge and slippery down to it foot. I love this trail because I can see most part of Maokong gondola cable line on the top of the mountain. After hiking up to Erjiaoge shan, we went to Xinghualin and turned to Zhangshan temple, and then got back to NCCU about 5:00 p.m..

I didn't take a lot of pictures because I didn't want to slow down my pace and I wanted to build up my ability and strength so that I can do longer and challenging hikes in the future. Here are pictures I took during our hike.



The day was balmy, we enjoyed the warmth of sunlight and soothing breeze of the day. A lot of stray animals came out to enjoy the nice day, too. A stray cat came out and had sunbath, it was completely relaxed and wasn't alerted.

This is a view of Maokong gondola line from the top of Erjiaoge shan. There was no cable cars shuttling back and forth over the valley now. I took a picture of same spot last year which I still could see a lot of cars in a line. It will take me approximately one and a half years to see cable cars again.


This is where landslide happened, which has made Maokong gondola stop running for months, and Taipei City government decided to rebuld pillar forward about 30 meters.

I took this picture while I was strolling on the campus of NCCU. A kite without a runner. (I shoud find some time to read The Kite Runner.)