Elephant Mountain

At the top of Elephant Mountain, feeling amazing.

Elephant Mountain is one of the Four Beasts: Elephant, Tiger, Leopard, and Lion, that are just north of Taipei 101 in Taipei City. The mountains are said to resemble the animals they are named after. I’ve read a couple of hiking blogs and travel websites that tell about the trails on these mountains. It seems that they’re all connected by many different trails that loop around all of the mountains. There are several starting points, but both times I’ve hiked there, we started at the most touristy one. I’ll post pictures and tell stories from both hikes, as they were equally awesome.

As with a lot of the trails in Taipei, this one starts off with a lot of stairs. I mean, a ridiculous amount of stairs. I imagine that someone at some point thought, “Hey, you know what would make climbing these beautiful mountains easier? Lots and lots of stairs.” I’d like to meet that person, and tell them what a horrible idea that was. In some areas, the stairs are literally only an inch high, so you’re doing this weird little dance-step on your toes to “climb” them. In other parts, the stairs are a foot apart, so you really have to work to climb those.

 

The first set of stairs. My friend Daniel and our hiking buddy, a random dog that followed us for a while.

Another set, a little harder, being farther apart. But hey, at least there’s a railing…

When you start at this trail head, you get to a point called the Stone Garden. It’s got great views of the city and of Taipei 101, and it only takes about 15-20 minutes to get there, which is why most tourists choose this option. Both times that I went, I was dressed for some serious hiking. I had my “work out” clothes on, hiking boots, and a backpack with a huge water bottle and some snacks. There were some other people who were just in jeans, maybe carrying a water bottle. I was pretty tired at some points, even on that first part, because of all the stairs. But there were some people, even kids, who were running up the stairs like it was nothing. I think there are a lot of locals who do this trail every weekend, especially people who live right in the area.

The first time I hiked, there were spiders all over the trail. At one point, there was even a spider hanging down in the middle of the trail, and several people almost walked straight into it. Now if you know me, then you also know that I am terrified of spiders. I actually find them really interesting, and I like learning about the different species, but I don’t like running into them. I did however get close enough to one to take a picture of it, and was pretty proud that I didn’t run away screaming like a little girl. The body and head of the spider was almost the length of my hand, from the tip of my middle finger to my wrist.

A golden orb spider on the trail. Beautiful, but also terrifying. Their venom has an effect on their prey similar to that of the Black Widow, but much less powerful and not harmful to humans.

Stone Garden is usually pretty packed with people, especially on a weekend. There are several boulders that you can climb, some easier than others, but you usually have to wait if you want to be up on one by yourself. I climbed two of the boulders, getting some great pictures of the city and Taipei 101 in the background. There are also several “photo-op” platforms on the trail, especially in the beginning, so I have some nice pictures from there as well.

A view from one of the platforms near Stone Garden.

My friend Sarah on top of another boulder.

On top of a boulder in Stone Garden.

On my first hike, I didn’t go much farther than this. At that point, I didn’t know that the main trails were lit up at night, so I turned around to make sure I got back down in enough time before dark. When I went the second time, I noticed that there were lamp posts, and had also done some reading before hand. We also wanted to make it farther than just Elephant Mountain, but the trail maps are a little hard to understand, especially when they’re all in Chinese. This time though, we decided to try one of the smaller, dirt trails that branched off of the main one. It was a lot easier, especially since once you get past Stone Garden there aren’t as many staircases, and the trail is more like what you’d expect in a mountain.

The dirt trail that we followed didn’t go on for very long, and just kind of ended abruptly at what looked like someone’s house. We tried to go a little further on what we thought looked like the trail, but it was basically like crawling on the forest floor to try and get under and in between branches. We saw two monkeys, but they weren’t paying much attention to us and jumped away through the trees. I was a little paranoid after though, because I had ziplock baggies with carrots and grapes in my backpack.

Sarah on the dirt trail.

Right before Sarah saw the monkey.

Thinking about how to get across the fallen tree the easiest way.

On the other side of the tree-bridge.

After that trail ended, we turned back around and kept following the main trail toward what we thought was Tiger Mountain. On the map that we saw shortly after the boulders, we thought that Stone Garden was the peak of Elephant Mountain, but later found out that it was a little less than halfway up.

The main trail leads past several temples, and we stopped to take pictures of a few of them. There was even a little shrine at one point where you can use incense sticks to offer up prayers to the gods. The day that we did this was actually the same day of a funeral of a friend of mine back home, who passed away unexpectedly from the flu, so stopping to pray at the shrine gave me some peace.

The shrine we prayed at.

A statue garden.

A temple a little ways off the trail.

After the shrine, it was basically just a straight shot to the top of the mountain. The peak that we climbed to was actually called Mount Thumb, and it was another staircase off to the side of the main trail. I think if we would have kept going on the main trail, we would have eventually gotten to the other beasts, but I’m so glad we took the staircase. It was hell, and I wanted to die about seven times on the way up. I had to stop a lot, because this is where the stairs were at least a foot apart each. At one point we got to a rest area with a pretty great view of the city again, but it was a little cloudy so the pictures aren’t great. But it was still pretty awesome. Then we finally came to a part that had ropes to help us climb, and the path was very narrow. The feeling that I got once I finished and was standing on the literal top of a mountain though is indescribable. Even though it was cloudy and a little rainy, it was incredible.

The view from the rest area before the peak.

Dan on the trail with the ropes.

Sarah climbing.

Me climbing. We made this look more epic than it actually was, but it’s still pretty cool.

Made it to the top! Incredible view.

Sarah and Daniel.

In a little bit of shock at the sensation of standing on top of the world.

You can almost make out Taipei 101 behind me to the left.

On the way back down, we took a different trail to get off the mountain that took less time than going all the way back the way that we came. We knew it was going to get dark soon, and we wanted to make sure that we were either on one of the lighted trails, or made it to a main road so we weren’t stuck in the forest with only a couple of small flashlights.

We came across another temple on the way down that had kind of a mix of Buddhist and Hindu statues, as well as the entrance to an old mine shaft. Everything was in Chinese, but it looked like what used to be a coal mine. We decided to explore a little into the mine shaft, but didn’t go very far. It obviously hasn’t been in use for a while, and there were parts of it that were collapsed. It was really cool being inside, although probably pretty dangerous.

The entrance to the mine shaft. It had been remodeled to be touristy.

Inside. There were pictures along the walls from when the mine was active and a statue at the end of some miners.

I noticed behind the statue that the entrance to the actual shaft was still open, and there weren’t any signs that said “Danger” or “Do Not Enter,” so…

We tried to take some pictures inside the mine using the flash. Not great, but I wanted to add a couple to give you an idea of what it looked like in there, and how dark it was.

You can almost see Daniel up ahead on the right.

A map of the mine shaft and surrounding areas.

Possibly another entrance/exit, or where there used to be a river or something.

Overall, the hike itself was about 3 hours. We did a lot of stopping to take pictures, drink water, and eat a few of our snacks, not to mention taking the dirt trail and going out of the way for a little bit. From the other blogs that I’ve read, it says you can do the entire Four Beasts in 4-6 hours, but I’m not sure I believe that, seeing as we only made it to one. I’d like to go back and try to get to the other three beasts, Tiger especially. I’ve heard that there is one point where you’re climbing completely vertically and need the ropes in order to do it, so I’d love to challenge myself and try that out.

These are the kinds of things I was really hoping to do and see while I’m here, so I’m grateful that I got to experience it with some great people as well!