Distance: 15.8 km
Time: 5:30 hr
Elevation gain: 764 m
Elevation loss: 933 mBeside the nightly disturbance of the big group setting their tents just around our tent, the night was very calm. We woke up at 6am to get an early start to beat the midday sun. Today we tackled section 8 and 9. Section 8 included the highest peak of Hong Kong, Tai Mo Shan at 957m. The morning was cloudy and very humid so we filled up our water bags to max.
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| Section 8 |
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| Section 9 |
The start of section 8 is just by the campground and from there it directly ascends toward the highest peak. This was definitely a good way to get our metabolism going. The ascend was fairly slowly, there were no stairs and we kind of missed them. On the way up, the cloud were really dense and we were hiking inside the fog layer. It was a very different setting than all other days so far. Not only because of the fog, but also the nature, it was more open and exposed. At one flat section we even passed by two cows who were just standing there. The last summit push is along a paved road again and once we reached the top we were fairly disappointed… The fog was so dense that we couldn’t see ANYTHING :) On top, you can now fully reach the top of the mountain as there is a military station on top.
Nevertheless, we had a nice break on top. There were a lot of cyclists who rode up the mountain, took a quick break and rode downhill again. The way down was along a paved road and a lot of people were on their way up with big cameras. We were underneath the fog just a couple of meters below the top. Going further down you couldn’t see that the peak was covered in fog, I guess a lot of the people hiking up on that day were quite disappointed when there were on top.
Once we reached the parking lot for the visitors going up the mountain, the weather cleared again and it was sunny. Section 9 went up and down along windy paved roads and trails, it was not that special. We thought about finishing section 10 today as well, but we were kind of exhausted from all the up and down that we decided to stick to our plan of staying at the campground after section 9. The campground was nice and open, we still had a lot of sun to enjoy as we arrived at 1:10pm. Our initial plan was to use our internet data on our phone to plan our upcoming travel, but we couldn’t find any reception. Along most of the whole MacLehose trail, we were able to get reception but not here :-)
We rested in our tent for a while and some people enjoyed a BBQ at the campground. However, by 5pm everyone left and we had the campground for ourselves again.
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