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About Yinghanling, Guanyinshan
The Difficulty Rating: ★★☆☆☆
There are more than one mountains / hills which are named Guanyinshan (觀音山) in Taiwan. The one on the western side of Tamsui River (淡水河), standing across Bali (八里) and Wugu (五股) in New Taipei City, is probably the busiest Guanyinshan. The summit at the elevation of 616 m is not particularly high, but it is a prominent land feature when you look toward it from many hills such as Qixingshan (七星山) or Xiao-Shitoushan (小獅山) in Greater Taipei Area. Guanyingshan is even visible on a fine day from a distant ridge of over 3000 m.
It is a super popular hiking destination where attracts groups of visitors each day. Among the many tracks on this mountain, the one leading to the top, Yinghanling (硬漢嶺), is the most-visited destination for most of hikers. The lookout there rewards hikers with the panorama across Taipei Port (台北港), Tamsui River, Datun Mountain (Datunshan 大屯山) and all the way deep into the entire Taipei City, including the iconic Taipei 101.
I only visited Yinghanling twice, in 2008 and 2022. With a such long interval between two trips, I did not feel anything different, still the same amount of people there and the annoying fog obscuring the scenery. Because the view on Yinghanling is so great that I heard the lookout is busy 24/7, especially during a clear day or whenever cloud inversion is promising. That is the time when heaps of photography hobbyists may take over the entire lookout, even hours ahead of dawn. Anyway I was not that lucky for an attempt to shoot time-lapse videos in 2022; In half hour after I arrived the lookout, dense fog and moisture caught up.
To arrive the trail head near Lingyun Monastery (凌雲禪寺) by public transportation is possible, but it was not very convenient as there were not many buses passing there a day. After I returned to the same trail head, I walked down a trail further to the Lingyun Temple Parking Lot which is in the front of a different temple, Kaishan Lingyun Temple (開山凌雲寺). The small bus terminal at that parking lot offered more options to MRT.
