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Updated Thursday, January 17, 2008 0:00 am TWN, By Richard Saunders, Special to The China Post



	Xiao Jin Ping Hot Springs nestle at the foot of a small cliff beside the rushing river. (By Richard Saunders, Special to The China Post) Enlarge Photo

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The disappearing hot springs of Xiao Jin Ping

Presently the concrete track splits at a fork, but it’s obvious that we need to head downhill, towards the river, still far, far below. It’s terrifyingly steep. Apparently (our hot springs guidebook informs us) four-wheel drive, high clearance vehicles can make it all the way to the hot springs. I certainly wouldn’t like to be in one coming down this roller-coaster drop, though.

A smart wooden bench, quite out of place in this wild spot yet gratefully accepted, gives us a moment of respite and a beautiful view up the gorge before we press on, negotiating the steepest bit of the whole descent.

Before long the track reaches the level of the river, an exceptionally beautiful landscape of tumbling water, huge, polished boulders and unspoiled woodland, including a smattering of maple trees that provide a brilliant display of yellow and red this early winter day. Beside the track on the left stands a huge boulder as big as a small house, with a deep, sheltering overhang.

Beside it a tiny trail descends to the water’s edge at the confluence of two streams and a huge, deep pool of blue water. We’d have been in for a swim in a trice had this been July rather than January.

Instead, returning to the track, we follow it downstream another hundred meters or so until it abruptly ends, swept into the boulder-strewn riverbed by typhoon floods. For the last 50 meters or so, it’s a case of picking one’s way through the rocks, until the hot springs (three square, concrete pools nestling at the foot of a small cliff) come into sight.

At least that’s where they were. Fragments of the concrete walls that once held the bath-hot water can still be seen, but Mother Nature, as is often her way, has been through and cleansed the stream gorge of its unsightly man-made additions, apparently, we later find out, during a typhoon a couple of years ago.

Several pools of water remain, but we soon discover they’re as cold as the stream rushing by a few meters away. Maybe another flood in the future will come through and clear away the sandy gravel that blocks the hot spring sources, and Xiao Jin Ping Hot Springs will exist once more, but we’re keeping all our clothes on this chilly day.

It’s a disappointment, but the long climb out wasn’t in vain: The gorge is as pristine and enchanting as any I’ve seen in Taiwan. As we face the long trudge back to our car, I make a note to return to enjoy the marvelous, cold pools of water—one day in summer.

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