12 Days in Taiwan – Day 05 – Mt. Hehuan

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With the benefit of hindsight, while we didn’t do the crazy early ascent up Mt. Hehuan (合歡山, or Joy Mountain) for the morning sunrise – next trip maybe?! – the mid-morning drive up the mountain was actually at least as good. We benefited from very clear weather, making for reasonably well-lit mountain ranges even in the distance without strong casts of shadows.

We drove out of Cingjing at 9:30AM, slowly making our way from the 1,920m altitude at The Cotswold Villa and finishing at about 3,250m attitude at the Jian Feng peak. Along the way, driver Kong stopped at numerous scenic points for us to take photos, soak in the sights and enjoy the very cool mountain breezes. I didn’t do an count, but guess we stopped maybe 8 times throughout our ascent. We left the top most stop-point at about 11:20AM, and it takes another 30 minutes or so to descend. I reckon Kong was mindful of time – we were visiting Cingjing farm after lunch – but if you’re not big on sheep or you don’t face time pressures, you could add another 30 minutes to an hour of stopover time.

Not all the viewing points are equally as good either, with my favorite being the stop that marks the start of Taroko National Park, followed by the last point at 3158 Cafe, named because – you guessed it – the cafe is situated at altitude 3158m. The cafe sits on a steep but doable hike up to Jian Feng peak. The kids by this point were feeling too cold, so stayed in the car while Kong kept an eye on them, while Ling and I tried climbing to the top. She didn’t make it and stayed at the cafe, and I got to perhaps 80% of the way up before I remembered discretion being the better part of valor: the last bit was really steep, and I doubted the A73 would survive a tumble LOL.

Pictures here taken on the Sony FE 16-35mm f4.0 – it’s really getting a lot of mileage this trip – and the panoramas using the Samsung Note 9.

Just about 10 minutes drive up from The Cotswold Villa – about 2200m I think.
Visitor-friendly walkway at one of the stopover points.
Thick cloud layer. If we’d visited around 1:30PM, we would have gotten deep blue skies – and also get roasted by the sun too!
Winding mountain roads. Kong remarked that this road is used by heavy trucks every dead of the night as they make their way from Hualien to Taichung. The road gets even narrower further up the mountain, and is unlit too – which makes it a very dangerous drive for the trucks.
The Huawei Watch GT showing 3,134m attitude, 691hPa atmospheric pressure, and heart is beating 115 bps to keep up! Surprisingly, I haven’t suffered from motion sickness this trip at all: credit really to driver Kong for his rock solid driving skills and also a very stable vehicle he drove us around in.
I’ve seen this picture before in blogs elsewhere before, so snapped my own too.
Ling was a little worn by the higher attitude, so she stayed back at the cafe while I continued climbing.
The really steep parts of the climb are made more accessible through makeshift steps. But a good level of fitness is still required. It’s a safe climb if you can handle the altitude – just go slow and make sure you’ve got shoes with good grip.
A panoramic view from almost-Jian Feng Peak.

We started descending Mt. Hehuan about 45 minutes to noon to get to our lunch stop back at Cingjing and our visit to Cingjing Farm itself.