Hiking In Hong Kong

As much as it hurts me to write here....

For those of you that think Hong Kong is just an urban jungle, you're wrong. After finally getting a good guide book, along with the end of the wettest month ever, we were all set to bond with wilderness.


Tuesday July 1st was the celebration of Britain turning Hong Kong back over to China, and more importantly, we had the day off. So I planned a little bit of a Hike for us. Anna, Sarah, Sam (and friends), Kirsten, Cole and I left around 6 am to head for the Tai Tam Reservoir, the trailhead for Hong Kong Trail section 7.





The beginning of hike was completely flat as we followed the reservoir catchwater. Though flat, it provided some great views of the reservoir and Stanley on the other side. This area was abundant with life with butterflies, insects, spiders and oddly enough crabs. As you can see, there were some above averaged size spiders.







About 4.5 miles in,we came to a small fishing and boating village. This place was pretty much only accessible by foot or boat. (There is a road leading near it, but the staircase leading between village and road is an quite an obstacle). We took this as a natural place to eat lunch, though it was still only around 10 am.


On the way out of the village we climbed a daunting flight of stairs. There were somewhere between 700 and 800, enough to not bother counting. About half way up we turned around to see how secluded the village we were just in truly is. Its a sole patch of beach on an otherwise tree-lined shoreline. With that behind us. We went back to work on the steps.


At the top of the staircase we completed stage 7 of the HKT and moved on to the most famous section, stage 8, Dragon's Back. This area started off by sending us up some more stairs. Shortly(about .3 miles in) we reached the first of the many peaks of Dragon's Back, Shek O Peak. From here we had some good views of the village below, and the outlaying islands.

We then headed into the main stretch of Dragon's Back, which was the most painful part of the trip, at least for me. This was completely exposed the full strength of the Hong Kong sun for quite a while. We crossed a few more peaks with great views of the sea as well as Big Wave Bay, our final destination.



The path then took a pleasent change. We entered a denser section of trail. The paths were shaded resulting in drastic drops in temperature. The easier hiking conditions provided a much more enjoyable treck. We ended the Dragon's Back section and proceeded to Big Wave Bay, where we enjoyed the views of our new found beach.