And the winner is .....

1st July 2010

(0) Comments | Thursday 01st July 2010

The winner of my Win a Print competition is Mr J Neff from Dundee. Congratulations and thank you to all those who entered.

Here is Mr J Neff's story and photograph.

Looking Northeast from Mount Kalahei, Shei-Pa range, Taiwan

How do you end up on top of a remote 3000 m peak in Taiwan together with two other chaps who speak about as much English as I do Chinese ?

It all started with a surprise business trip to Taiwan in springtime last year. Having to stay there for two months immediately brought up ideas to prepare for spare time diversions similar to those at home in Scotland. Sure enough, at the company where I was based, a wee crowd of keen mountaineers was found who invited me to a four-day trip to the so-called "Wuling Quadruple Mountain trail".

Preparations were immense considering that we were not climbing Mt Everest. But hiking permits were only issued upon submission of a written "expedition" plan with details of all participants, planned route and rest stops with timings of each journey leg, equipment carried and emergency arrangements.

Of the original 20 only ten remained by the time we set off one Friday evening. Already after a few hours on the first day we lost one soul to blisters and cramps, well before reaching the first summit, Mt Tao. By the time we reached the night shelter another three complained of headaches. Well, we were above 3000 m now and without much time to acclimatise the rapid height gain obviously caused problems to some. Even though the day had passed fairly gently, with not much more ascent than the average Scottish Munro earlier on followed by an undulating path along the mountain ridge.

The next day, saw us scale the highest top of the chain, Mt Pintian (3524 m), but before reaching the next night shelter four more folk decided to descend back to the valley due to continuing headaches and other issues. This evening the weather turned for the worse and it looked increasingly unlikely that the next day we would be able to take the long ridge trek out and back to the fourth summit.

But things had brightened up a wee bit over night and so off we went. Well, at least three of us as another two decided that it would be too much for them and descended, too. This left me with the only two of my Taiwanese companions who spoke no English at all. But, with my tiny grasp of the Chinese language and "hand-and-feet" we managed to communicate sufficiently.

So, after a few hours we reached the final top of the four-summit -chain: Mt Kalahei.

The photo shows a brief almost mist-free glimpse as we emerged from the shifting cloud. It is surprising that on an island less than half the size of Scotland but with more than 23 million inhabitants there are such large areas almost entirely devoid of people. From the busy crowds at the city of Taoyuan where I was working, this was a haven of peace and quiet.

It was a long way back to the shelter and down to the cars though with improving weather and plenty of sunshine later in the day. So it was quite a surprise when many hours later, as we drove down the road back to the East coast, we suddenly broke through the top of a cloud layer and thus descended into the low light of a "warm haar". Can I get back up the mountain please... !?

What made this mountain trip even more memorable was the unfortunate fate of the project that I had been working on in Taiwan: the British company for whom all this had been set up soon went bust, the machine came back to Scotland and three years of work had been wasted. Just as well that I got a wee holiday out of it all.

(Jojo Neff)

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