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About Snow Hiking Training in Taiwan
The difficulty rating: ★★★★☆
Snow hiking training or snow field training (雪訓) in Taiwan is usually the course to learn the fundamental skills and concepts to hike and camp during the winter condition in snowy / icy mountains. It does not cover skiing or other snow sports.
Advanced mountaineering techniques like serious ice climbing or glacier rescue are either not the main purpose of these courses or there is nowhere to execute these skills in Taiwan due to the lack of permanent ice or snow field. Even frozen waterfalls or icy cliffs might present somewhere in the winter, they normally do not last long or may be hard to reach.
In winter the snow condition in the high mountains varies day by day in Taiwan; snow or ice may not be thick enough for any meaningful practice and thus many snow / ice climbing courses are held in nearby countries such as Japan where a reasonable amount of snow and ice can be guaranteed, but a trip for this type of training is always pricey.
Generally hikers in Taiwan are aware of the risk during the snow season; and most of hikers minimize the risk by not hiking at high altitudes in winter. In contrast to this conservative attitude, some people still went to snowy mountains but ended up being airlifted, alive or dead, due to inexperience or just the bad luck. As a moderate hiker, I think it is a waste of nature’s giving to let snow hinder the enjoyment but it might be too risky for me to do difficult hiking in winter. I would just visit those easier trails to have some light tastes of my winter adventure in this tropical nation.
Xueshan (雪山), Nanhudashan (南湖大山), Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Yushan (玉山) are the four most well-known places that snow in winter. Among them Xueshan and Nanhudashan may retain their snow for a longer period of time in the cirques which were probably shaped by the past glaciation. Xueshan Cirque (雪山圈谷) is a popular venue for a snow field training because of its relatively “friendly” terrain (but please remember the snowy trail is still hazardous).
My Snow Training in Xueshan
In February 2011, my partner’s university hiking club organized a 5-day training in Xueshan. The trainer was one of the Taiwanese pioneers who had climbed those 8000ers since 1990s. People with this expertise are still few and far between even nowadays in Taiwan. Only half of the time was spent in the cirque to practice the techniques as the transportation time and the time we moved the gears up and down the cirque was considerable.
It was an exhilarating and fulfilling trip to really tread into snow for the very first time of my life. The weather alternated between clear and snowing, the magic transitions I had only seen on the screen and magazine. The trail around and beyond 369 Cabin (Saliujiu Cabin 三六九山莊) looked surreal where the tone, texture and feature of the landscape were entirely changed. The scenery in Xueshan Cirque was dreamy as well, a transient paradise for a photography hobbyist.
Besides the gorgeous scene and excited mood, I learned to use some techniques and special gears to move on the snow and had a first-hand experience to realize what risks a heavy snowfall may bring to hikers. This training definitely helped me get through a hike unharmed one and half month later in Qilaishan where the slippery snowy trail caused a non-fatal accident.
During this training we did not reach the summit of Xueshan because of the insufficient time left after the practice and the soft snow in the cirque seemed too weak to hold up our snow anchors once we fall. Fourteen years later in 2025, I made it to the summit in a snow season.
