Remote stream with several fun waterfalls to climb (in) to.
- Beauty/fun: 7/10. Quite remote, so most surely with little people if any. Clean water. Tons of waterfalls. Several pools where to dip into. You can end up in HK’s desert.
- Difficulty (check this link if new here, this is not your standard HK hiking web): 6.5/10. There are some sections where the rocks in the water are quite smooth = slippery. Rock scrambling around is simple. Several route options which require navigation skills.
- It can get long. Blue line, easy pace with little stops, over 5 hours.
- Map with several alternative routes (how to download to your phone).
See full screen and the Garmin track of the blue (with a clear error there), the green & the orange routes.
Transportation. Yuen Long MTR station. Walk to Tai Fung Street minibus stop.
Minibus 33 going to Ha Pak Lai (下白泥). In this case you will not go to the end of the line, but stop at the Ha Pak Nai (AP Tsai Hang) Public Toilets.
Not even 20 meters to its right you will see the stream that you will be walking IN. In our case we walked 200m more to the next road bend and jump into the stream. Video where you see clearly everything you will enjoy going on.
Bit of easy jungle and soon you will be walking in more open space.
Rocks, sandy streambed, transparent water. Soon you will find the first waterfalls.
You can climb them easiest on their left side.
Every little time you will find more waterfalls. Some are small, some several meters high.
The fun part of quite some of them are that you can climb them really easily, even walking in the water.
Two of them have an extra fun. Caves through where to climb. The first one has a really tiny exit, which we have done only with little flow. The second one though.
It’s even more worthwhile trying. You ascend the waterfall and you get down this rock on the right.
To come out from within the rocks. As some one said before: “replicates the experience of a baby being born from a mother’s womb”.
Definitely not for claustrophobic people. You can avoid any of the waterfall climbs in any case as Grace was doing every time. In her case she got just wet up to knee high.
As you continue your ascend the volume of water reduces, with different tributaries merging in at least two forks. In both cases we continued in our SW direction. In a previous hike/run (alternative route) I went up the SE tributary. Soon the slope decreases and the exit path is not clear: hard bush walking. Up SW.
Several slim waterfalls.
Till where you can find ribbons going out of the stream and up the hill. As mentioned, this is quite remote, with very few hikers and therefore the vegetation can grow fast closing the path. I needed to use my “machete” (Ikea knife) to open the way a bit and find the path. Mix a bit of instinct, ribbons, GPS and you will find the way within the bushes.
After short time you will get into the desert like scenario, similar, although bit less dramatic than the previous Ha Pak Lai hike. Although was funny to find this mini cactus this time on the way up.
And the city below where to go down.
Video of Nov 2018 visit going through the green route (easier exit).
Nov 2019 visit through orange, even easier exit.
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