Hiking Guanshan

My buddy Ross and I both had another week off this summer and decided to hike a trail we saw on the last trip. It was up to a mountain peak called Guanshan (關山) (no need to add a "Mt." to that name because "shan" means mountain in Mandarin) that we saw the trail head to while on the last trip. It was in an absolutely beautiful part of the park and after doing some online research and "google-earthing" I realized something: I was in absolutely no shape for this grueling hike!
Well, I had ten days to prepare for the hike and I did what any out-of-shape guy would do: try to talk Ross out of it! Luckily, he wasn't having any and after our meeting to plan the trip...I realized we were going whether I liked it or not.

So I sucked it up and tried my best to get in shape. The first few days of hiking the small mountains around my house weren't encouraging as I rubbed my trembling, sore muscles. But, with about 5 days to go, I realized that climbing all those stairs was getting easier everyday and I celebrated...by walking to the top of my building... twice... yeah, that's 74 storeys...yeah, I'm bragging.

So, a few days later, we were on our way. We drove about 9 hours south to the Southern Cross Island Highway and stayed in a lodge at the top of the highest point on the highway (see "day 1" on this map from the last trip). This was probably a life saver, because it gave us a night to get used to the altitude (2,300m ~7,500ft).


The big morning arrived and we set out at 8:15am. Let me tell you, hiking 6.7km (~4.2mi) might sound like a nice long walk, but throw in a 1,300m (~4,300ft) vertical climb and you're looking at a hell of a long day.

The hike itself was just a good as we had hoped for. We hiked through a deep, dark forest and passed 2,000 year old trees; we came upon wind swept mountain clearings; and even passed through a small bamboo forest. As we got closer to the top, the trees faded away, leaving us with stunning views of most of southern Taiwan and a lucky glimpse of Jade mountain (玉山）- Taiwan's highest mountain, in the distance.


Reaching the summit, we only had time to quickly admire the view, eat some food, and turn around. The ascent took longer, and was more difficult than we had hoped for and now we had a long trip back down. It took us 4.5 hours to get to the top and we only passed one other group of people. We were happy, but on the edge of what we knew we could do physically, so we needed to get down.

The way down was faster, but exhausting. We made it to the bottom in 3 hours giving us a total hiking time of 8 hours... not bad considering the extent of the hike. Over beers and fried rice at the bottom of the mountain, we decided that, despite its beauty, we probably won't ever do this hike again... After all Guanshan (關山) mountain is only the 10th highest in Taiwan... Hmmm...