On Monday, my dad and I hiked up to High West again. As we walked along Harlech Road, we saw quite a few people exercising their dogs. The waterfall there was filled with running water, more then we had ever seen before. Before we ascended High West, we did a bit of stretching in a little park. An old man was doing tai chi and some other people were exercising but there weren’t many people about. As we were walking up the steep path, we noticed that there were lots of spider webs, we could see them clearly because there was some water on them that made them visible. We also noticed as we walked higher that the fog was getting thicker and thicker and we could see less by every step. By the time we got to the trig station on the tip we could barely see 3 meters in any direction.
Fog is caused when wet and humid air combine with dry cold air because the moisture in the humid air cools, making it more solid like water. It felt moist and soft on my skin (more about fog http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fog). It felt nice having the soft and moist fog on me. While we were up there, a few people crept up to us from the mist, it seemed like they had come from nowhere! We gave them some advice about when to go on the western trail of High West and when not to. Hikers often share knowledge with each other about the best routes.
Our plan was to go down the southern side of HW. Although it was marked on the map, we had not been able to find it before so this was our first attempt. The reason why we found it this time was because some orienteers had cleared it a bit and marked it with a red ribbon. We often find these ribbons on trails. This means it is not dangerous but not fully safe (more info on orienteering in HK can be found in this site http://www.oahk.org.hk/). The walk down wasn’t so hard, it was only a few spots where the rocks were slippery. We stopped for lunch in an open rocky area that had a good view down Pokfulam valley and where we could see the top of HW covered in mist.
When we got to the bottom we followed the HK Trail towards Pokfulam Reservoir Road. We crossed quite a few bridges. We also saw 2 crickets. The last few times we crossed these bridges, there was no water in the streams but this time they were full and running! We also saw the biggest centipede we had ever seen (it was at least 25 cm long and had a huge amount of legs on each side). But we couldn’t get a photo of it because it was moving too quickly! It was a good hike especially as we had gone somewhere we hadn’t gone before and because the feeling of being in the mist was so good! There was one thing that disappointed my dad and me, it was the litter that lined the southern trail. Every few 30 meters there were empty plastic water bottles. I don’t understand why people would enjoy the nature and destroy it at the same time.
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