Pingdeng Canal Old Trail (Yangmingshan)

Not long ago, on a fairly warm and sunny Saturday, we hiked the Pingdeng Canal Old Trail outlined in Richard Saunders' Yangmingshan: The Guide.

You can read about how to do it in the book, and anyway I'm not the best person to ask as we got lost, but here are some photos from that lovely day:

If you decide to stop and see Shengren Waterfall (聖人瀑布) on the way, you have to climb a lot of annoying stairs. The good news is that the views are nice.

...as well as amusing and homey.

Shengren Waterfall - technically prohibited to get that close but whatever. There are a few sections of the trail that are technically "prohibited" but you can go anyway; it's perfectly safe.

An old, not terribly attractive but legitimately antique, temple by the base of the stairs.

The stream we "illegally" crossed to get to the waterfall.

Yeah....um....yeah. Um. BAD naming choice, guys.

Later on you have to scramble over rocks along a low stream to get to where the trail picks up again, and oh yeah, the actual path to the trail is indiscernable so we had to scramble through brush and mud to get back to the part that was actually walkable, in prime snake-hole territory. Fun. Richard, you may want to look into that when you advise on taking a nonexistent fork to a path above.

We were confused later, and ran into this guy about an hour after our detour around a ridge (another unclear trail junction. Grrrr, Richard. Grr. It said bear right, and we did, and right took us up and over an unnecessary ridge). He looked like he knew what he was talking about and directed us to Qingtiangang.

Polluted sunset over Qingtiangang. You can't even see Taipei and its sprawl through the smog. I blame China.

For dinner, we had delicious lamb and other dishes at Ah-Guo's Lamb Restaurant － 阿國羊肉 - near Wenhua University, and mediocre kung pao chicken. Next time, we'll try the goose.

We did get to see some rare color-changed autumn leaves along the canal, though.

All in all, a lovely day hike but after months of not hiking (foot problems) it really wiped me out. Also, better directions would have been nice.