Silong Waterfall - 四龍瀑布

This a very short hike, maybe only ten minutes if you drive to the trail head but in the summer I'll take any opportunity to get wet and cool off! To get there follow the 106 from Taipei towards Shen Keng. Just before a Formosa petrol station, there is a betel nut stand on the right, this is where you need to turn right. Follow the signposts for the Paozilun trail 炮子崙.

The beginning of the trail is not that easy to spot. Keep going up the road, ignore a turning over a small bridge to the right and keep you eyes peel for a trail on the left. There are no tags for it.

The trail is made of stone at the beginning but this quickly turns into sandbags so if you see lots of sandbags, you're probably on the right one!

It's an easy if a little slippy walk to the waterfall. Just next to the falls, a shelter has been built with a changing room, shower, small cooking area..... etc. It doesn't really add to the beauty of the place but the locals seem to spend a lot of time there and want somewhere comfortable to pass the time.

Below the waterfall there is an old wooden pallet which you can climb up to get up under the water. People come here to use the falls as a water massage jet. It's powerful and a few minutes under there is more then enough time!

We spent a little while by the waterfall and then went back down to Shen Keng to wander around the old street. Shen Keng is famous for it's stinky tofu and I tried some again but it seems no matter how many times I eat it, I can never get used to the taste. Eating my socks after hiking for a day would be more pleasurable.

That said the old street at Shen Keng is full of all sorts of different foods and snacks and it's definitely worth a visit.

Practicalities

Bus number 236 goes from the Zoo to Shen Keng and takes about 15 minutes. It would probably be an extra 30 minutes to walk up the road to the trail head.

Lots of places to get water, food etc in Shen Keng.

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Zhuzishan and Alibang Waterfall - 竹子山與阿里磅瀑布

Usually when I go hiking I have a pretty good idea of what the trail is like and the route that I'm going to take. However sometimes that isn't the case and I go somewhere on a wing and a prayer. Zhuzishan 竹子山 was one of those hikes.

I went to Qixingshan 七星山 not very long ago and from the peak I spotted Zhuzishan. I don't really know how to explain this but sometimes I just see a interesting or beautiful looking mountain and that makes me want to climb it. So I got out my map and found a route, the Zhuzishan old trail.

The trail head isn't easy to get to and driving is the only real option. It starts in a village called Daozhaohu 倒照湖. The initial trail went up gently and wasn't very demanding, apart from a lot of sliding around in the mud!

After a while we came to an Earth God temple 土地公廟. From here the trail splits in two and we headed up to the right towards the Alibang waterfall. Again the trail was very easy going and although there are a number of side trails, there are signs to direct you too. After about 30mins or so, we reached a point where we could get a glimpse of the waterfall and it was impressive.

We carried on and eventually the trail met up with a river which we walked up for about 100m until reaching the waterfall. The waterfall itself seems to have 2 parts and a small pool at the bottom; in the summer this would be a great place to cool off.

The hike up to this point had been easy, however, it was soon to unravel! According to my map there's a trail on the opposite side of the river that leads up, around the top of the waterfall and onward to Zhuzishan. We found the trail easily enough and headed up. From here it was tough going, very steep and slippy and there were no fixed ropes. Towards the top we got some really nice views back towards Jinshan and the coast.

Once the trail begins to level out, the vegetation changes completely. Lots and lots of arrow bamboo 簡竹. It was really difficult to see the path as the bamboo is incredibly thick. In some parts it was taller than we were and it was more like crawling through a bamboo tunnel!

The forest briefly changed again and at this point there was a fork in the road. Straight on led to another waterfall, but we didn't head that way and instead we went left towards Zhuzishan and more bamboo.

Eventually, after a struggling through the bamboo we reached a clearing and got some great views of the surrounding mountains. From there, the trail headed down and then disappeared suddenly. We spent about half an hour just crawling around inside the forest of bamboo trying to find the path. It's like a maze in there and it's so easy to get disorientated. And after giving it our best shot we just had to give up.... it seems the path on my map no longer exists... bugger!

So we headed back down. There is actually another path by the Earth God Shrine and I suspect that one leads to Zhuzishan without going to the waterfall, maybe next time! And in despite of the fact that we never made it to Zhuzishan, this was still a fantastic hike and I'll definitely be going back to try out that other path sometime.

More pictures here

Edit - We did eventually go back to follow the other path and again the trip was unsuccessful. We followed it up for at least an hour when suddenly the trail got really thick with vegetation and became incredibly steep. Threee minutes later and we bumped into a couple of Taiwanese guys who were trying to hack their way through to forest with machettes. We passed them but there wasn't a trail anynore and we were just aimlesly crawling through the jungle; no choice but to turn around. However the two Taiwanese fellas said that there might be a path in three months time.... I suspect not though!

Practicalities

We drove up Yangde boulevard and followed the road signs for Jinshan. After going over Yangmingshan and then heading down we took a left turn at a bridge called the Sanhe brdige 三和橋. This small road leads into a farming area and there are lots of other small roads leading off the houses and the like. Stick to the biggest looking one and cross over two more bridges. The trail head is next the No.47 house in Daozhaohu 倒照湖. Walk past the house and look for the plastic tags on the right.

The walk to the Alibang waterfall is pretty easy and anyone could do it. As for getting to Zhuzishan..... maybe I'll find out next week!

The map below doesn't lead to the trail head but just the Sanhe bridge, you'll need to go further to get to the start.

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