Sunrise Hike

Katelin and I decided that we wanted to hike up Mt. Qixing (the highest peak -1120m- in Yangmingshan National Park) and watch the sunrise. So, we planned it all out and left our apartment early this morning at 2:30am, making the necessary 7-11 stop for coffee. Then we made the 30 minute scooter ride up to the park and found the trailhead. Things were still pitch black at this point so we were equipped with a headlamp and flashlight. The wind was blowing and the bamboo makes a pretty eerie sound when it rustles together and there’s no one else around, and to complete the scene, there was also a garbage can lid banging in the wind – eek! We set off and almost immediately encountered a massive toad the size of a large grapefruit in the path – both of us shrieked in surprise, but luckily those were the only animals we saw. (We were a bit concerned about seeing any of the numerous poisonous snakes that lurk in the vegetation here...)


We got about 2/3 of the way up and all the sudden we realized that we were in pea-soup fog, so we decided to hike back down so we wouldn’t get stuck up there and see if we could find another place to watch the sunrise. Once back at the trailhead, we drove just about 5 minutes and found a suitable place – we had a perfect view of the sunrise as we ate some fruit and drank milk tea on the side of the road. We were commenting on how pretty it was, and all of a sudden we realized we could also see the ocean! By then it was pretty light out and still only 5:15am, so we decided to make a short impromptu scooter trip. We drove up through the mountains to the northern coast, and made it about 3/4 of the way to the beach before we turned around because we were tired of being on the scooter. We found a very large cemetery with an accompanying crematorium/shrine/mausoleum thing – quite impressive!

So we arrived back at our apartment at 7:30...usually about the time I’m getting up for work during the week! I won’t be doing these sunrise hikes often, but it was really fun and quite pretty with all the colors and wispy clouds.