My first ever backpacking trip in Taiwan

I tend to do a lot of things by impulse, which is exactly how my first ever backpacking/hiking trip came about. One of the day hikes that I had long signed up for got canceled at the last moment. Feeling disappointed, I started searching for other similar hikes. I came across a 3 day 3 night hike in 白姑大山 near Taichung, Taiwan with a group called 523, which almost sounds like "I love mountain" in Mandarin. The mountain is number 42 on the top 100 peaks in Taiwan at 3341 meters.
The deadline had already passed to register, but I tried my luck anyways. Luckily for me, someone had back out at the last minute, and I was able to secure that last spot.
I was excited but nervous at the same time as I had never hiked up anything other than the streets of Europe with a big backpack before. The leader of the trip also informed me that this is one of the harder hikes in Taiwan. However, having conquered Mt. Kinabalu in Malaysia (which is literally the hardest thing I've ever done), I wasn't too concerned in the end.
One of the many things that I learned on this trip was how different camping is in Taiwan as opposed to that in the US. In terms of eating, hiking time, park regulations, the actual campsite, etc. It was definitely an eye-opening experience.
We met at a metro station at 10pm, and off we drove down to Taichung. I didn't know anyone else on this trip with a total of 7 people. It turned out that I was the only female participant. Oh well, I thought, I can rough 3 days out with 6 guys!
I half dozed off on the way down to Taichung, when we arrived, it was close to 1pm, and we had to switch to another car with 4 wheel drive in order to make it up the mountain. Off we go on another drive, and soon I found out why the 4x4 was needed. Not only was the road steep, it was bumpy, with holes and rocks everywhere. I was really surprised that roads like this actually existed in a civilized country. As of mileage the entire ride wasn't very long, but the difficulties of the road made the unbearable drive last almost 2 hours. When we arrived at the trailhead it was close to 4am. Many other groups were already there spread out in their sleeping bags. I decided to take advantage of the 3 hours that we had left before we start hiking by napping in the car. I slept like a baby.
We all woke up at around 7am, and started cooking breakfast, which was an amazing meal consisted of yummy flavored rice porridge with veggies inside. We even had eggs and other marinated goodies.

The Shack near the Trailhead

After fueling up, we started with our hike. One of the difficult parts of this hike was that it was very steep. There was a lot of up and downs, which I didn't mind because I find hikes that just go straight up a little boring. It was in a fairly forested area, so the air quality was excellent, and I felt great despite having little sleep. We reached the first point at around 11am, in time for an early lunch. As we waited for our leader, my mouth was already drooling in anticipation of the meal to come. However, to my great disappointment, our lunch consisted of a few slices of Taiwanese-style cheesecake type of bread. I ate 2 slices, and couldn't eat another slice. I felt like I needed actual food and not snack type of food. The funny thing was when I first saw those packages I thought that was for dessert. Wishful thinking....

First rest stop

We were hiking at pretty good speed and reached the campsite at around 3:30pm. There were already tons of other tents up. It was a 3 day weekend in Taiwan, and apparently a lot of people decided to do the same thing that we were doing. There were only a few good spots left to set up our tent, so we started before the rest of our group caught up. Afterwards, we went and a water at this pond, which had "dead water" meaning it was water retained from rain, and not a fresh water source. The dark brown color was due to the decaying of leaves and bugs, sounds yummy right? But hey I rather drink dirty water than die of thirst, when it comes to extremities, you gotta weigh out your pros and cons.

Campsite

Cooking dinner

We started cooking dinner at 5pm (we were all starving due to the light lunch we had). We cooked curry and rice for dinner and some soup. But I'm not gonna lie, at this time I was craving a PB&J sandwich, some granola bars, or some grilled veggies, OR grilled marshmallows.
We were all exhausted and with the sundown early and temperatures getting cold, everyone went into their tents. I went to bed at a record time, 7pm. I slept horribly in a cramped tent with 3 other people, but at least I was warm.

Yummy drinking water

The next morning, or should I say late night, other campers were talking and banging at 2am. Needless to say I could not sleep after that. Our group wasn't due to wake up until 4, so I stayed in my sleeping bag for 2 more hours.

View at the camp

Breakfast consisted of ricenoodles and soup (which was again NOT ENOUGH!)
The hike this day was even more difficult, because it had a lot of steep uphills and downhills, which became very difficult on my legs. The good thing is we didn't have to carry that big backpack. I was strutting along at good speed though, as I was always one of the first to arrive at our next point.

I was snacking every hour because my body felt so starved. We reached the peak at 3342 meters at around 10:30am. It felt like a big accomplishment! I wish I was there alone to savor that moment instead of listening to 30 other people chatting and taking pictures. I was again starving, and was almost angry to find out that lunch was vegetable crackers. My cravings for the items listed above were more intense than ever! If only I had a Apple Crisp flavored granola bar on me, or some bread at least! I want my carbs damn it!!!

View at the peak

The view at the peak was breathtaking as we were able to see many of the other famous mountain ranges in Taiwan. After resting and taking pictures for about an hour, we started our descent. Which wasn't much easier than the hike up because as I mentioned the entire hike was up and down so on the way back it was just as strenuous as going up. At the rest stop one hour before our campsite we decided to take and easy and nap for a while because we all know how noisy it was going to be back at the site.
Back at the site it was the same routine as the day before, dinner, chat, and then sleep.
The next day we started descending at around 7am after drying out the tents and such. Our bodies were tired, and our mind was tired due to the lack of sleep again thanks to our neighbors. What we all really wanted was a nice cold soda and a nice cold beer!

Early morning view

We finally made it down the mountain in about 3 hours!! I arrived back home that night not feeling tired as I should. I was so glad I went on this trip because I met some great people who shared very similar interests as me, and I found out many other hiking opportunities in the future that I can join. Taiwan mountain ranges, here I come!!!!