Hike: Wulai shan (烏來山)

Map, desription, and photo by Fred.

This is a 6 hours, 12km hike, with 900 meters of elevation.

Departing from wulai village, up to wulai shan (烏來山). It has a nice way up a ridge (pretty steep and strenuous, with a few easy roped sections) for the first two hours. This first part is not suitable for dogs or kids. It is also not suitable in case of rain (unless you like to crawl in mud).

The trail then continues in the forest until Datongshan (大桶山), with a much more gentle elevation. You will continue north for about 2 hours down on a more gentle larger trail, with quite a bit of stairs.

At some point then, you will cross a nice forest of very tall pine trees (san shu ?? ).

On the Richard Saunders books, it would rank as a level D hike.

You can see more about this hike on this blog.

UPDATE MARCH 2014:
1) DO NOT take the trail from the Aboriginal Village to Wulai. Always start from Wulai towards the village. This way you will be climbing the extremely steep part of the trail uphill and will have a gently sloped trail and some stairs at the end. I personally think trying to go down to Wulai on this trail is suicidal, especially if the soil is wet.

2) Make sure to have the GPX route available or carefully follow the signs and ribbons on the trail. There is an amazing network of paths up there and it is rather easy to get lost.

Map

GPX: We don’t link to GPX files directly anymore since links get broken whenever Wandermap updates their system. Instead you need to look on the Wandermap page, below the description of the hike, in the right corner for a “Export GPS Data” button. It will then download automatically.