Mt. Hehuan is one of the most popular mountain peaks above 3000m in altitude in Taiwan because it is the only one where you can drive to. It's also an iconic spot for star photography where you can aim for the north and capture the concentric star trails with a nice mountain and car's light trail as the landscape. Although I am not exactly keen in shooting exactly what everyone else has already done, it's such an iconic spot that I had to visit.
The road to Mt. Hehuan from Mt. Lishan was just as twisty. It's about an hour between the two destinations and since we were told that a section of the road is under construction and there will be check point to let cars through every hour, we were ready to spend some time on the road and not exactly in a hurry.
As we drove on, I guess we did pass the construction spot but there wasn't any check point, so it was all good, and then we arrived at this famous junction where each road will take you to very different places of the island. It is like the ultimate road junction and the path you choose will result in very different destinations. From that point on to Mt. Hehuan, the road's general gradient suddenly increases dramatically. Within a short few kilometers, we drove from 2000m in altitude to 3000m. The landscape changed just as drastically, no more tall large pine trees, just shrubs on bare mountain slopes, but the green was overwhelmingly soothing to look at especially against the blue sky. The roads became even narrower and passing cars in opposite directions became more and more tricky. At many instances I wish I could stop and take photos, but there wasn't any spot that I can really do that because it will be too dangerous. It was also noticeably getting more and more crowded. No there was no settlement there, just tourists and tourists. Then we arrived at the main tourist center where there was a gift shop that sold some much needed hot food.
Before going to Mt. Hehuan, and since I've never been there myself, I've been doing quite a bit of research by browsing Google map street view to check where the accommodations are especially if I was planning to spend a long day there for the night photography. It seemed that there was only one shop, one place to stay over night( but it was too over booked), which is also the only place to have dinner. I personally don't like the lack of choices because if one of them aren't open for any reason, I will be stuck without dinner. The nearest place to get food would be at least an hour away. To our luck, every place was opened for business as expected and it was also to my surprised that even at such desolate place, there are services and conveniences, which I don't really know if it is a good thing.
The air at Mt. Hehuan is absolutely delicious and with the cool temperature and beautiful landscape, it was hard to leave. Luckily we were there for quite a few hours unlike most of the tourists who were just passing by. In all honestly, there isn't much to do at Mt. Hehuan other than to just chill and hike, so I can't blame anyone for not staying any longer than they did. There are many trails that takes you to the different peaks, such as the main peak, northern peak, eastern peak etc. Each trail features different requirements and we went for the easiest one, which is the main peak. It's just a concrete paved path that will take you to the peak of Mt. Hehuan in no longer than 30min. However, hiking at 3000m altitude with full pack of camera gears wasn't nearly a breeze of a walk as I expected. It was absolutely manageable, but took a bit of effort.
Unfortunately just as we were getting to the peak, the clouds moved in and surrounded us again, just like it did at Mt. Fushou. This means all we could see was a white wall, not the awesome view of the central mountain range which is what we call the backbone of Taiwan.
We stayed on the peak for a while, taking our time just to enjoy the moment, the air and cool water vapour floating among us. After all, it will probably be a long time before I get to visit this spot again. The descent back to the trail head was quick, and time for a bit more hiking on some other trails.
The main event at this point was really just waiting for the sun to set and the stars to rise, and of course, dinner. The clouds just seem to like me a lot, followed me from Mt. Fushou to Mt. Hehuan. It was not a good news for me at all, but we took the bet. After dinner, the light was still up but the clouds just got thicker and thicker. The hotel staff felt that we are out of luck for night shots for the day and I decided that it was not worth the wait, and we headed down the mountain. Just like that, no climax of wonderful star trails or the milky way, but a wall of whiteness and disappointment, all I could think about was a good night sleep at the hotel we were racing to an hour of pitch black mountain road away.
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