A short yet solid hike up Lion Mountain

Six kilometers later, I found Gentleman Duck off Keelung city route one, a back road winding up the scenic valley of the Malingkang Stream. It turned out to be a large, imposing and richly eccentric mansion surrounded by walls bearing plaques and busts of, sure enough, the web-feeted bird that curiously resembled the logo of a certain apparel brand.

Standing outside the front gate, I caught a glimpse of the bare, towering cliffs that loomed over a stream beside it. This revealed itself to be the northern face of Lion Mountain (獅石山), which looked quite unassailable from here. My map, however, insisted that there was a way to the summit, and so our intrepid expedition continued.

Unlike the popular Four Animals Mountains (四獸山) looming above East Taipei, Wudu’s Lion Mountain and its partner, Stone Elephant Mountain (石象山), are little known. On a map these twin peaks appear insignificant. Reaching only 160 meters high, they’re barely off the starting block in the altitude stakes, yet Lion Mountain is surprisingly impressive, with sheer sandstone cliffs and a rough, steep dirt trail to the summit ridge. It’s a short, but surprisingly exciting climb. Who said size is everything?

We shortly located the trailhead, a couple of hundred meters past Gentleman Duck, where a flourish of colored ribbons marked the beginning of a steep and rough dirt trail climbing the wooded hillside. After a couple of minutes’ scramble, we met a path of concrete steps, long abandoned, overgrown and, frankly, not much easier to follow than the dirt path.

The path rose steeply, taking us to the first ridge in about 10 minutes, then meandered round to the right through the dense undergrowth. The sheer sandstone cliffs that guarded the peak on three sides rose dramatically out of the forest, the trail clinging close to their foot. It looked like there would be no way to the summit in this direction.

In another ten minutes, however, the path rose again, and with the aid of ropes and natural rocky steps, we made our way up a very steep cleft in the side of the cliff. In a couple of minutes we were standing on level ground atop the ridge, and the steep, adventurous trail had joined a much wider one.

Turning left, we emerged from the trees into the open and stood at the summit of Lion Mountain, whose cliffs dropped away perpendicular at our feet. The view was fine, if not unspoilt, taking in the road we’d driven here by, winding through the gorge, and expressway 62, carried high above the ground on a stately, arched flyover.

Retracing our steps and this time keeping straight ahead on the much wider path, we traversed a kilometer along the ridge, which dropped gently then doubled back to the right. Continuing straight ahead at this sharp bend, another narrow, overgrown trail took us up through the forest to the summit of Elephant Mountain in about fifteen minutes, where another fine view and more sheer cliffs welcomed our party at the top.

It was tempting to take the exciting outward route back down, but good sense prevailed, and after rejoining the wide path, we shunned the slippery descent in favor of the safer, gentler descent of this path. We passed below the cliffs of Lion Mountain and soon rejoined the road, just a couple of hundred meters from Gentleman Duck and the car, two exhilarating hours after leaving it.

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