Ba Dao Er Mountain - 拔刀爾山

I'm not sure how to translate the name of this mountain, maybe "pull out knife mountain".... perhaps the name is a transliteration of the aboriginal name! Anyway this is nice, relatively short hike near my favourite place in Taiwan, Wulai 烏來.

To get there, drive along the Xinwu road 新烏公路 to Wulai but instead of continuing into Wulai, turn right over the red bridge and then up the mountain. At a family mart (i think it's a family mart... some kind of convenience store) turn right and keep going up.

The views on the way up here are great. You can even see Taipei 101 and there are loads of viewing platforms to stop at. About 10 minutes after turning right you get to the Bao Qing Temple 保慶宮 and this is where the trail starts.

The trail initially follows a concrete path for about 100m, then to the right there are some tags and this is where the proper trail really starts.

It's pretty steep going and in parts there are fixed ropes but even with the ground soaking wet it wasn't too difficult. And after perhaps 30mins we reached the first peak Meilu Mountain 美鹿山 (850m). There's no view here so after a quick break, we cracked on.

There are several side paths and so it's a good idea to make sure you know the characters for Ba Dao Er Shan 拔刀爾山 otherwise getting lost might be a real possibility.

On the way we passed several camping spots that look as though they are used by the local aborigines and after a while we came to this small run off stream. Very slippy!

For most of the trail we hadn't run into anyone and I had even said that we were probably the only people up there, but suddenly a group of about 25 people came down saying that we were almost there.

For the entire trail we were in the forest but just as we got to the peak the trees opened up and we got some nice views. Were it not for the clouds, the view would have been even better.

After some food we headed down and altogether it took us about three and a half hours. On the back to Taipei we stopped at an aboriginal restaurant and although the barking deer and flying squirrel were tempting, the price put us off a bit and we just ate some pork instead.

More photos and Phil's Chinese blog

Practicalities

Wulai can be reached by bus from Xindian MRT, however we started the trail up the mountain and you really need you're own transport for this.

Water and stuff can be bought in Wulai or at the family mart on the way.

The trail is slippy but there's nothing scary or difficult about it.

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