Team: GoforWild
Time: Sep 26-27, 2015
Place: Siji Village, Yilan
Difficulties: ** (2/5), steepy forest with big tree roots, and all year round wet mud, and bushes of trenchant miscanthus.
1. Tales of Chialo lake:
There is one tale tells a story in the elder day, a beautiful fairy accidentally drop off her mirror, broken to shiny pieces of misty lakes. Another story tells this lake group is a scattering pearls from hand of a pretty peri. The biggest and most beautiful lake was named after mountain Chialo.
At the height of 2300m and moist lake group environment, Chialo lake easily get foggy and sudden change of weather. Foggy smokes and rains cover the lake mysteriously, meanwhile beams of sunshine makes it look fairy-land alike. Together with its reflections, the lake mystique unlimitedly expands and forms a scene of mirrored wonderworld.
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| Scattering pearls from fairyland |
2. Cypress woods:
At the moderate to high altitudes of 1000–2900, green coniferous forest. This including two kind of famous cypresses that can be found here: Chamaecyparis taiwanensis (hinoki, 扁柏) and Chamaecyparis formosensis (meniki，紅檜）, both are very valuable timbers. How to distinguish those two ones? Basically, even looks quite the same, however, differences still can be found in their smells and growing directions of leaves. Hinoki is solid and shows greater in quality then Meniki.
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| A walk in the woods |
From the silent woods, there's a tragic history to be told. Back to Japan ruling time, the first Meniki that was academically described and named had been discovered by Japanese researchers around Jade Mt. Area. Since then, plans of exploiting those valuable wood had been begun. A great number of cypress wood were cutting down and transferred to Japan for shrines and wood-architectures construction.
After the left of Japanese rulers, KMT (Nationalist Party) took over the career of wood logging for next 30 years. As a sad consequence of that, over-cutting situation had led those cypress now endangered species. Since 1980s, cypress logging had been forbidden all over Taiwan.
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| Hiker enjoys surrounding green environment |
At present, those still standing there are a lot smaller ones in size and ages. My admirations towards nature now somehow turn to an endless commiseration whenever passed by the half trunk of wood that had been downed.
Apparently, there are thousands of forests on the world, especially many developing countries, are facing the same destiny. Abominably, the ignorance citizen unacknowledged about the logging activities and most part of profit went to pockets of minorities. Exploitation of natural resources for economic development has now been a serious concern not only to government, as my opinion, but also to public crowd.
3. Trails :
There's a trail starts from Taiping Mt., along Central Mt. Range chairlift ride directly to Chialo Lake, which name Chia-Tai vertical trek. However, this trail requires more hiking skills and stamina in advanced.
Our team took the easier trail, starts from Siji forest-road (四季林道, also called Chiaping forest-road 嘉平林道) which is ard 1200m height . In total, it takes 5-6 hrs of ascending to destination of 2300m height. On the trail, there's some significant stops like Chianafu Stream crossover, Giant Menoki... Back to the age of timbering, the forest-road lead directly to Giant Menoki, which considered as officially trailhead. Nevertheless, years of desolation made the forest-road conditions worse. Besides trekkers, only aborigines often visit this route to prepare water conduits.
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| Chianafu Stream cross People also do river tracing up to Chialo Lake |
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| Chianafu Stream cross after 2015/08/08 Soudelor typhoon, this big Menoki had fallen down. |
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| Or facing this steep & messy tree roots slope. |
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| Giant Menoki, which was the official trailhead for a while (紅檜神木登山口) Photo credit: GoforWild.com |
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| After bushes of trenchant miscanthus, there're several dried tree trunks on the way. |
4. History of Chialo Lake
The lake group was discovered in early 1930s, while the timbering career had been at its peak in Taiping Mountains area.
Three biggest logging farms in Taiwan under Japan ruling periods were Alishan area (Nantou), Taipingshan area (Yilan) and Baxian shan area (Taichung). Taipingshan area can be divided in three parts: New Taipingshan area (now famous sight -seeing Taipingshan National Recreation Forest), the second area was ard Fengcui Lake, and Old Taipingshan area (around Chialo Lake).
Among those Taipingshan logging areas, the Chialo Lake was the one had been exploited earliest (1917) and soon reached its resources exhausted after 20 years of empoldering. As the boisterous forestry center had been desolation, Chialo Lake also faced its being forgotten destiny.
Only until 1987, Taiwan University Mountain Climbing Club had held an exploration to Chialo Mountain and Chialo Lake, and had all relevant information published later; brought back its reputation towards nature lovers and trekkers.
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| Morning on the lake |
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| Reflections of camping site at Chialo lake, without any filter. |
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| Sudden fog covers lake surface in the morning |
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| Sudden fog covers lake surface in the morning |
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| Sudden fog covers lake surface in the morning |
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| Glowing sunshines lighten part of Chialo lake's surface. |
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| Lakeside camping site (photo credit: Mong Chen) |
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| Little Yellow Dog stayed right by side our camp all night long. He hiked all the mountain long within 2 hours and showed angriness when we give him nothing to eat. |
Many of surrounding smaller ponds which were named during the exploration still now in use widely, such as :
- Haomai Pond (豪邁池，literally means Bold and Generous) was named for the reason of need to take a really big step forward to climb over many big dried trunks stands nearby
- Weidan Pond (偉蛋池) was simply a combination of two team members' first names.
- Cetui Pond (撤退池, literally means Retreated) was also related to exploration team experience of getting lost and retreating.
Had withdrawn bravely from the wrong direction, the explorers returned to previous fork road, but only found Chialo lake in the next morning after a night camped right by Weidan Pond, which they first mistook as Chialo Lake. Doubtlessly, the road to success is not straight, we all getting lost sometimes and easily misleading at a certain moment. As long as your teammates got your back, everything is gonna be fine. Sooner or later, the wonder is gonna be discovered.
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| One human, one backpack, learning how to communicate with Mother nature. |
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| Calling from the wild！ Would you dare to step forward? |
Notices:
- This trail requires Entry permission, you can register online first or just simply register at Siji Police station.
- All year round wet mud which may kill your hiking shoes, I suggest rain boots instead, unless you don't care to dip half of your shoes into the muddy soil.
- Bushes of trenchant miscanthus cause cuts also, maybe you'll need a jacket when cross over.
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