Three Days at Snow Mountain

We left Taipei in a minibus at around ten thirty in the morning. The weather was cold and the dark clouds portended rain. The organisers of our trip had told us to pack an absurd number of items, but I had dismissed many of these as just part of the Taiwanese impulse to take hiking overly seriously. Why should one pack thermal gear for a hike up a subtropical mountain that does not exceed the height of four thousand metres? And why bother with an expensive suit of weatherproof clothes when an umbrella and some spare dry clothes might work just as well? Nevertheless, the coolness of the morning scared me a little, as I already had to put on a second shirt.

Our bus ride took us south-westwards to Yilan, where I had a tough time finding vegetarian food for lunch. All the shops seemed to sell either beef noodles or fish balls. From Yilan, we headed southwards to Taizhong, arriving at one of the entrances to Xueshan early in the afternoon. The weather felt a little brisk, but pleasant, and we were told the skies would clear up in the following days. As all other visitors, we watched the compulsory safety video on how to survive the mountains, replete with tips on what to do in the case of snakebites, hypothermia, altitude sickness, and more. Given the thorough preparation, I was somewhat disappointed not to have seen any snakes during our entire trip.

On our first day, we only climbed two kilometres to our first place of accommodation, Qika Lodge. Unlike in subtropical Taipei, many of the trees had red leaves, and the air felt less humid. It felt like being back home during the autumn. The lodge itself was very simple. It was there that I discovered that people did not shower when climbing Xueshan, nor were they offered much comfort in restrooms (the only toilets were of the squatting variety, and the urinal was essentially a trough with running water). Luckily, all I had brought was a tiny bit of shampoo, which would remain buried in my bag for the duration of the trip. As for the sleeping arrangements, we received sleeping bags to use in the communal dormitory – essentially two shelves for stowing away humans horizontally.

A Catholic church in Yilan

The welcome centre to Xueshan

After a sleepless night disrupted constantly by people who could not figure out how to use their headlamps, we finally set off for a slightly longer march at around half past seven in the morning. We zigzagged our way up the mountain through the forest, and continued to climb until we got to our second lodge, the 369 lodge, a little after noon. The lodge, from what we gathered, was supposed to overlook a very scenic valley, but clouds had almost entirely enveloped everything around us and it was not until the next day when we got a clearer idea of what our surroundings looked like. What we did get a clear sense of was the amount of human waste decomposing in the restroom, which stank up a twenty-metre radius (though luckily not the inside of the dormitory). The restroom seemed to have been built on stilts, as every time I wanted to use the urinal, it swayed in a very disconcerting way.

That, but mostly my aversion to squat toilets, prevented me from using anything besides a urinal for the whole duration of our trip. Perhaps this was also the reason why I did not get much sleep the second night, but that could also be blamed on the fact that, despite my five layers of clothing, I got a cold and spent about an hour in the middle of the night just blowing my nose.

A pine tree

A blooming tree

Autumn colours

Our first view of the mountains

A friendly white-whiskered laughingthrush

Another view of the mountains

Ferns growing from a tree

Emerging from the forest

More of the same

Mountains

An alpine accentor

More trees

Pyracantha berries

Fog among trees

A forest path

Tiny flowers

More of the same

We departed the lodge at two o’clock in the morning on our third day, forming a ten-people queue of torch bearers practically glued to the back of our trusty guide. I imagine that if we were seen from a distance, we would have looked a little bit like the main characters of ‘The Seventh Seal’ led by Death in a danse macabre in the film’s final scene. We spotted two Formosan serows, who seemed to be petrified by our lights and would not budge until we left them alone. Our hike to the top of Xueshan, 3886 metres above sea level, ended before six o’clock with a beautiful sunrise at the peak. From thence, our journey went only downwards, covering the whole stretch we walked in the past three days. I wore a hole through one of my socks, but mostly I was glad that I no longer felt as though I was dying of frostbite. We made it back to Taipei a little after eight in the evening.