Tso Kung Tam stream

One of the most accessible nice waterfalls. Really close to the city! Nice photo spot. Great discovery just randomly running around.

• Beauty/fun: 6.5/10. Nice pools, but the main waterfall area can be dirty with the villagers just above throwing their waste to the stream. Clean upper with low flow. Several not completely vertical waterfalls. Messy exits through dense forest or even denser bush.
• Difficulty (check this link if new here, this is not your standard HK hiking web): 6.5/10 if doing the red route, 7.5/10 ending in green, 3/10 if just going to the waterfall and back to the city.
• There are not many ribbons marking the path. Several early exits. Very little rock scrambling required. It can be very overgrown, with little hiker activity around after the main falls.
• Map, with the alternative exit routes in blue and green; purple alternative entrance if you want to avoid jumping the initial fence. The Red route in less than 4 hours leisurely walking, pictures, etc.

And a better map (how to download to your phone offline maps)

See full screen and the Garmin track of the full itinerary and the alternative short round trip or the right more difficult route.

The starting point is the Tsuen Wan Discovery Park bus terminus. Buses from Wanchai coming here. Otherwise just take the MTR red line till the very last station, Tsuen Wan. Exit A, walk in the corridor and you will arrive after 10-15min walk.

You have two options from here. Purple line will take you next to some tennis, basketball and other courts. Continue walking NW direction and you will arrive at the stream. In our case, we just went up through Tsuen King Circuit road, find some stairs down to get close to the stream. Jump the little fence and there you go! Here the video of the most interesting places you will see. Newly acquired drone’s images included 😀

Footage from two different days, drone and mobile. If anyone wondering the tone changes. One day was very sunny, another one mainly overcast.

Walking in the initial part of the stream is really simple. You can still see clearly the city behind and even on the East bank you can see a concrete path in parallel for the first 500m.

Enjoying the clean and tranquil waters with impressive reflexions.

Here good enough to put the picture upside down. Did you realize that it was not the real sky but its reflection? In this area, you can see tons of different birds including horns and some migratory birds. I have seen quite some aficionados with all their gear set up (huge lensed cameras, binoculars…) to see them all.

And in little more than 25min you arrive at the main attraction. Hiker and waterfall for size reference.

The waterfalls can get substantially bigger. Both days, when I was taking pics, had been within completely dry weeks. Nice looking in any case and enticing to dip into the pool below.

You can just come here, enjoy the place, and in 30 minutes go back again to the city. In our case we continue, going up through the right wall. Not especially difficult, but requires using your hands for safer ascend. Once on the second level you will see more waterfalls.

Here we crossed to the left bank (watch in the video), getting our shoes slightly wet. You can keep them dry (yet, not for long) going through the right slope, exactly on the right of the picture before. Faded ribbons around.

From here onwards you can try to continue maintaining your shoes dry. You will be leaping from rock to rock. Keep your balance! 😛

In my case, I like to walk in the stream itself, so no problem. You will arrive at a point with some shacks around, cross the pond somehow

and you will be in the first easy exit. Water supply department’s structure and a concrete path connecting with Route Twisk (after passing several gates and fences supposedly not allowing to go to where you come from…).

We continued up. Slowly traversing the stream left to right to left…

Till the most “technical” point. If you are not comfortable scrambling with little feet space you better just swim/walk through the stream itself. Previous hikers have set some ropes, but better avoid them too. Not ver secure.

Mid-way pretending it is a piece of cake, but not really… A couple of steps where you can fall into the water.

We continued up till a crossing. You can easily see it in OpencycleMaps.

The North direction (right side) path is steeper and the volume of water is higher. Therefore the falls here look nicer, but I could not find any easy exit. Just before arriving at the catchwater you find a quite high waterfall that I did not dare to climb as I was just on my own. Instead, I found a path with a ladder and others heading NE direction. The problem was discovering finally that the land seemed private and I needed to jump the wire fence out…

The left stream is way easier, even with several hiking paths, bridges, etc that you cross and that you can take any time for an earlier exit.

We tried to do all the way up to the concrete catchwater. But the area little by little gets quite overgrown.

So we needed to walk waist-deep into the water and finally give up and just 100m before the initial intended end, find another exit, with ropes set up by local farmers or hikers.

The hike can be way longer. Tso Kung Tam stream continues up Tai Mo Shan hillside. I will post more sections later on.

Everything you should know before stream hiking.

Short route in 2020 exiting next to the Water Supply department structure.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by iurgi (@hkoutdooradventures)