2006年3月19日 星期日

Castle Peak Basin 青山腹地

Hazy (am). Sunny periods (pm). BF0-5 23oC photos 相簿
Thought it would be a foggy trip with drizzles, yet it turned out to be hazy and gusty. Our first stop was the thousand years old monastery located near the foot of the Castle Peak. A stone which looked like a section of a spine, was preserved in a glass cube. Beneath several huge boulders, there lay the ancient plaque and an altar. The writings on the plaque claimed Castle Peak to be the best high mountain in the area. Thousands of steps led us to the summit where the well-known pavilion [韓陵片石亭] stood. It was there when I first came across the gust that day. From then on, it kept blowing hard on us while we're at the valley of the Mong Hau Stream. Its estuary has now been turned into a landfill site. The trail along the stream as marked on the map was lost in real world. In this area, the best way to choose a route is to do it on-site, not much planning could be done in advance. Exploring this area will give you the excitement as when you're practising orienteering, only the land of Middle-Earth in the Lord of the Ring can compare. If you happen to get lost, there'll be no Ents to bring you out of the "forest", because there's no forest at all. Only rough and barren terrains are in view, with thick vegetation down those valleys with running streams.
Climbing up the ridge on the other side, we struggled against the gust, heading west and then descending to the fallow field in the basin. A track cut across the meadow from east to west disappeared somewhere in the distance. Instead, we had traversed the place in another direction so as to reach the spur in the north. A sandy trench cutting deep into the meadow was well-hidden by tall grasses. Fighting our way through the thickets, we were able to reach another section of the same stream again at the other side of the knoll. Once again, we had to traverse another knoll so as to reach the famous Bread Loaf Rock[方包石 HE022795] we'd been looking for. In fact, we might also have reached it just by walking along the stream, it's only the matter of route choice. The Bread Loaf Rock was a giant boulder with severe disintegration occurred along its 3 vertical fault lines, making it looked like a loaf of cut bread. Next, we clambered up the ridge by its side after a short break. To our surprise, there was a huge erosion gully not far from the stream. It looked somewhat like the Crescent Gully [月牙谷], but of a straighter shape. By then, the wind had dropped quite a lot, ascending the slippery slopes became an ordeal in the desert-like area. Scenes of the harsh and rugged landscapes in the Ring came to my mind ... were we trodding the perilous path to Mordor? Would the winged Nazgul (messengers of Dark Lord Sauron) be sweeping across the sky at any moment? Which one of us was the Ringbearer? ... Only the chimneys of the power plant (the Two Towers) were in sight, sticking out through the mist. Time was running out, we decided to cancel the visit to Crescent Gully, and headed for Pak Long [北朗] at Lung Kwu Tan [龍鼓灘]. While trudging on another ridge for the river junction near Bread Loaf Rock, a deep gully with pink soil appeared just beside our path. Walls of thin mounds pointed their edges towards the heaven, with pines scattering at different corners of the gully. The earth around the gully had cracks that were ready to extend, it would surely be a sheer drop if someone happened to be on that section when the earth broke apart. Back at the stream, we had a rigorous discussion on which path to choose. In the end, we clambered up a knoll for a trail meandering through the valley. Crossing the stream 2-3 times, and moving forwards in forest most of the time, the last challenge was to cross a wide ford with steep banks like that of a trench. Actually, almost half of this trail was paved with stones. In the past, it should probably be a frequently trodden trail linking the deserted Fa Heung Lo Village [花香爐廢村] to Lung Kwu Tan. Further off, a wooden plank formed the last bridge of the trek, leading us out to the fields of Pak Long.

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