Certainly at first glance, Caoling Geopark (草嶺地質公園) resembles nothing more than a huge and very ugly landslide, a vast expanse of pulverized earth, boulders and debris that has obliterated the beauty of the once densely wooded mountainside. However, this is no ordinary landslip, but is the result of perhaps the most awe inspiring and catastrophic of all the terrible events that occurred during the great earthquake of September 21st 1999.

Before the night of September 21st 1999, the little road that today ends at Caoling Geopark continued a bit further, before arriving at the trailhead to two of the ten "official" attractions on the Caoling tourist circuit: the Spring and Autumn Cliffs and the extraordinary Lost Soul Valley. I paid a visit to Caoling shortly after first arriving in Taiwan in 1993, and luckily saw both of these arresting sights before they were destroyed forever in the great earthquake six years later.

The Spring and Autumn Cliffs were a spectacular line of vertical crags a kilometer long and about a hundred meters high. Laying at their foot, Lost Soul Valley was a secretive, narrow and very picturesque ravine forty meters deep and two hundred long, with bare rocky cliffs over which plunged a couple of tall, wispy waterfalls. A couple of fine old trees grew at the top of the vertical crags, and although looking as though about to topple over the brink, they somehow kept a roothold on the cliff edge.

Amazingly, both of these impressive sights were themselves products of a previous great earthquake (of magnitude 7.0), which struck Taiwan on December 17th 1941, when part of the southwest flank of Mt. Caoling slid down the mountainside, damming the Clearwater River in the valley far below and creating a huge lake. The valley remained flooded for a decade until the dam broke suddenly in 1951; over a hundred people were killed in the ensuing floods.

The remainder of Mt. Caoling's summit ridge gave way under the enormous forces unleashed by the still larger earthquake that struck just under sixty years later, at 1:47 am on that terrible morning in 1999, and a staggering 120 million cubic meters of debris slid down the hillside, killing over a hundred people, destroying both the Spring and Autumn Cliffs and Lost Soul Valley, and once again creating a huge dam, fifty meters high, behind which the water once again backed up into a huge lake for a year or so.It's almost impossible, while standing here and looking at the hillside, to really get a feel for the sheer volume of earth that came tumbling down that night. To get a slightly better idea, drive out of Caoling along route 149 towards Touliu (斗六), the County Town of Yunlin (雲林縣), for about five kilometers and look back towards Caoling from near the tiny settlement of Neihu (內湖).

Today, the long ridgeline above the tunnel which carries the road through the mountains from Caoling forms a pair of peaks with a long, low saddle in between. Before the great earthquake however, locals say, the skyline formed one long, curving summit, with the peak of Mt Caoling, formerly the highest part of the ridge, standing where the great dip can be seen today.

The scene on the site of the Spring and Autumn Cliffs and Lost Soul Valley today is one of complete desolation. The vast weight of the entire top of the mountain bodily sliding down the mountainside scoured the ground in its path, flattening it into a vast sloping plane which only now, almost ten years on, is beginning to soften under a carpet of grass, bushes and a few young trees.

For all their awesome power to cause death and destruction, however, earthquakes do have the power to create as well. Just as the upheavals of the great 1941 earthquake sculpted two of Caoling's most striking landmarks, the temblor of 1999 created several impressive new attractions, including the spectacular 'Grand Canyon' or Jhuolan, near Taichung, and, in Caoling itself, a 'new' Spring and Autumn Cliff, down in the valley below the Geopark.

It's not a bad thing that a visit to Caoling Geopark takes only a few minutes, as the Caoling area is a walker's paradise, packed with beautiful and impressive sights, but read the info boards and take a little time to study the scene carefully, and it may well prove to be one of the most memorable things you see on a visit to this beautiful area.