Up the hill and down again - Yushan

Well, we made it up (and down) Yushan despite me being worried about being too overfed to make it! To tell the truth, the actual hiking turned out to be a lot more straightforward than what we expected. The difficult thing seems to be getting the permit (it works on a lottery system as they only let a certain number of people climb each day). Luckily Paul's mum and dad hooked us up with a mountain climbing club here in Kaohsiung who organised everything for us. All we had to do was turn up on the appointed day and start climbing.


We were a bit scared by the information sheet which the climbing club gave us which told us about all the serious hiking gear we had to bring. We turned up covered in Goretex with our new hiking sticks (I don't know whether it was the stick or the incline but my knees were a lot better this time). We were surprised to see other people climbing in jeans and Adidas sneakers! Yushan is the highest mountain in Taiwan and is 3952 metres high.

Paul's family were kind enough to take us on an overnight trip to Alishan, a forest recreation area near the Yushan national park for the couple of days before we started the climb. This was fund and meant that we could meet with the hiking club the evening before the climb at Chiayi, instead of coming all the way from Kaohsiung that night (it also meant that we could have a last minute shower before meeting the club - no showers on the trail!). That first night, everyone hiking with the club all slept together in a hut at Dongpu.


The next morning we started climbing from Tatajia around 8.00am. The starting point was around 2600 metres above sea level. That first day we hiked 8.5 km to Paiyun hut about 2.4 km from the summit. Paiyun hut was 3400 metres above sea level. The first day's hike was quite easy, at least compared with Mount Kinabalu. There was a lot of up but it was interspersed with quite a lot of flat ground. The views out into the national park were amazing and the weather was gorgeous. It was quite warm when we were walking but we were in the shade for most of the morning which was good.


We reached the hut at about 2.00pm with time to go up West Peak (another peak of Yushan - we were climbing Main Peak) if we wanted. It probably would have done us good to go but our feet were a bit sore and we wanted to save our energy for the Main Peak. In true Taiwanese fashion, we were getting up at 1.30 to try to reach the summit for sunrise. We went to sleep around 7.00pm and I slept great for once. I don't think Paul was so lucky.


The next morning we set out around 2.30am for the summit. It was about 2.4km to the top. The first part was quite easy - zigzagging back and forth up the side of the hill. It wasn't until 3/4 of the way up the summit that the going got a bit tougher. We were going so slow with so many rest stops though I didn't find it that hard. We decided to take only one backpack to the summit - since Paul was carrying on a non-stop conversation with the guide on the way up I decided that he was going so well he could carry the backpack most of the way!


We got to within about 300 metres of the summit at around 4.30am and waited on a sheltered part of the track until the sun was just about to come up - about 20 - 30 minutes. Then we all went up to the summit. It was soooo cold up there because it was so windy. I didn't bring any gloves to save weight in my bag and my hands were so cold they couldn't even unwrap my Toblerone which I needed for energy, let alone operate the camera. I had to borrow Paul's gloves until they thawed out. They looked all red for the rest of the day.


Unfortunately, just as we got to the summit the cloud came up. This wasn't really surprising as a typhoon had been forecast and there had been some doubt about whether or not we would be able to go for the summit at all. We got a few glimpses of the sun but nothing that spectacular. For most of the time we were surrounded by mist. Never mind - reaching the top was the most important thing. It was so cold we didn't hang around once we had lined up for the obligatory photo with the summit marker.

We made it back to the hut around 6.30am in time for a second breakfast and then headed down the mountain. It was still really cold back at the hut - around 10 degrees. Luckily we took heaps of pictures of the scenery on the way up as we were pretty much surrounded by cloud all the way down the mountain. Still, it was nice walking in the clouds.


By the last few kilometres we couldn't wait to see the end of the track. Paul had a bit of a sore knee and our feet were killing from walking on the loose rocks on the track for two days. We finally reached the end (start) at around midday. Thankfully we stopped at a 7-11 on the way back to Kaohsiung on the minibus and stocked up on food - we were starved! We were so zonked after that we basically slept all the way back home. Paul's mum and dad were happy to see us safe and sound.

At the moment we are still hanging out in Kaohsiung. Paul's friend Charles has come to visit for about a week so we have been doing some touristy stuff with him. Apart from that we have taken the opportunity to stock up on a lot of things that we might need for the next phase of our trip, notably some cold weather gear (Goretex gloves, waterproof pants, reflective sunglasses etc). The prices here are much cheaper than Australia but you can still find some of the international brands plus a few Taiwanese companies do outdoor gear which seems pretty decent. We've also been to the dentist to get some minor work done and I convinced Paul that we needed to get a yellow fever vaccination so we did that at the hospital.

What with all the stocking up, Taiwan hasn't turned out to be quite as cheap as it could have been. Still, staying with Paul's parents has meant that we are able to devote our funds to the stuff we need for travelling, which is a blessing.

We are heading back to Ilan tomorrow to pick up some of our stuff before we head off for China on Sunday.