This is one of the best hiking trails in Taipei to climb for beginners and offers nice views of the city including Taipei 101 tower. It starts from the Xiangshan park that's well-known for a kids playground and a preferred weekend spot for families.
It is a massive park with lots of amenities including jogging tracks, walking pathways, bike rental stations for bikers, restrooms to get freshen up, kids playground having outdoor games for toddlers, basketball courts for teenagers, ample amount of space for senior citizens to sit back and relax, TreeFrog reserve and the Xiangshan hiking trail for hikers. basically, something for everyone out there!
Not just humans but the park is a favourite spot for our furry friends too! For all the dog lovers and owners, this is a perfect place to take your buddy for a nice walk and play around for sometime.
Once you enter the park, just follow the navigation for the hiking trail since it takes a bit of walking before you get to the starting point for the trail. It is somewhere near 500m of walking to get to the climbing point.
After walking in the left direction for 5 min. you reach the starting point which looks like below that says 'Xiangshan Station'. It mentions that the next station of the trail takes around 20 min. to climb and has a length of ~650m before reaching there. You will happen to see similar boards ahead while continuing the hike.
Just ensure that you do a bit of research on the weather before coming for the hike. As you can see in above picture, that day it was slowly drizzling and I did the hike without having any umbrella. Though it wasn't raining heavily but sometimes it could be riskier to climb the stairs during rains and also it may block the views you get on top of the city due to cloudy weather. Hence, it helps if you prepare ahead of the hike that ensures you would get the best views of the city and enjoy the sunny weather for the hike unlike me.
Its a popular trail so you can expect lots of locals and travellers like you also hiking beside you on the trail. As you can see above, I encountered quite a lot of crowd in spite of having the cloudy weather that day. Soon you come to a checkpoint with a billboard below that gives you two different routes for next part of the hike. Either you take the right direction to continue with 'Xiangshan Station' or left direction to 'Yi Xian Tian'. Whichever direction you choose, both of them takes approx. 25 minutes to reach the next hiking station as mention on the board.
I took the right and kept going. Soon I started seeing different varieties of flowers on sideways while climbing the stairs. Mostly blue colour flowers.
The trail starts getting interesting with more steps and slope getting slightly steeper on the way. I don't mind having more steps to climb but when the slop becomes steep, thats when I gets nervous (being a beginner!) however for the regular hikers it's not a big deal.
After climbing this section of steps, you start noticing that the trail gets narrower and gets a shape of zigzag line by piercing through the woods. This gives the trail a feel of walking inside the nature and I always like to climb such trails where its not just a linear climb without any random directions or trees breaking the path. That's what makes this trail so engaging and interesting to hike.
I get amazed by these Chinese locals (especially senior citizens) I see hiking on these trails without even hesitating for a bit. Look at the above pic; I mean these folks must be well over 50 - 60 years of age and still managing to climb down on their own with just a stick support. This is something I have observed consistently across Asian countries (especially Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Singapore and Thailand) where Chineses old generation is surprisingly fit and always noticeable on famous hiking trails across these Asian countries. I am personally not a big hiker and don't even exercise that regularly (something I am ashamed of but not hiding anymore); but when I look at these people I think to myself that I need to change a lot in my lifestyle to achieve their level of fitness.
By the way, once you finish climbing the zigzag section of the trail, you slowly start getting the glimpses of the city landscapes like above and that keeps you motivating to climb further along the trail to get better views. Then, you finally get to see the famous Taipei101 standing tall next to other smaller towers along with a lush green bushes on the mountain.
Once you keep moving ahead, soon you come to the first lookout point for this trail. This lookout point gives you a nice view of the Taipei101 along with nearby buildings.
Then you proceed to the next part of the trail going upwards with more steps to climb before reaching the next checkpoint. There is plenty more to hike further after 1st lookout point. Here again, you can take the either route both approximately taking 15 min to climb.
I took the left direction and kept going. Now you can always go back if you don't feel like going further along the trail as it might be too much. I saw few hikers were going back after reaching the first lookout point (as seen in below pic). I was visiting Taipei for 3 nights and I had kept half a day just to hike this trail, hence I was definitely up for the next section of hike towards 2nd lookout point.
I must say the trees that surround you while hiking this trail are so green and looks so neat. Might be because it must have got wet in the rain but the whole greenery around was simply soothing to me.
Coming back to my earlier point of how fit the senior folks were; forget about them and look at these little toddlers! I mean even the kids here climb these trails like a pro. I was really impressed with them. This guy below probably must be 5 - 6 years old; not more than that for sure. His elder brother is helping him out on the hike!
After finishing this section of trail, you will soon reach to the 2nd lookout point. From this lookout point you will get to see another side of the city view.
From here, either you can continue climbing up or start going back down the same route. I continued and soon reached a spot where the trail had few large rocks sitting on either side and people were climbing them to get a better view of the landscape. Some were trying get a perfect selfie for their social media profiles. Also, Taipei101 tower was already started getting covered by the fog! I couldn't even see its rooftop.
Keep climbing and then you reach at the next checkpoint as below;
From this checkpoint, the 3rd lookout point is right across the corner.
Now as I mentioned before, views from the 3rd lookout were stunning but slightly overshadowed by the dark clouds covering up the view as you can see below;
Its a nice spot to get different angles of Taipei city's landscapes as can be seen in below snaps;
The trail hasn't over yet! I kept going....
This was the last checkpoint where I started giving up going further along the trail since it was too much for me to hike and the trail still had a lot to offer going forward.
Below was the last view that I got of Taipei before turning back....
This was my last stop....
Beyond this point, I could see people still going further to hike as you can see below but I gave up finally! I think it was enough for a beginner like me to reach till this point and by this point I had already hiked for more than couple of hours and I had to go back following the same path that I took to reach up to this point.
Overall, I really liked this trail while hiking since it had so many lookout points in between so that made it convenient for all types of hikers be it a regular one or a beginner like me. Also, frequently you got to see the different sides of the city and not just confined with the same view which made the hike a bit more interesting. Also, while climbing I noticed different varieties of flowers and plants which were gorgeous looking like some of below ones;
I followed the same path while descending from the mountain. Hope you liked this post. Do share you comments and experiences if any while hiking in Taipei. Happy travelling!
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