Going up almost to the peak of Tai Mo Shan in a fun and “easy-ish” stream, pools to dip into. What more can you ask for!? 🙂
- Beauty/fun: 7.5/10. Fun stream to be walking in the water. The more picturesque waterfalls are in the upper section, getting close to MacLehose trail. Only complaint: there can be tons of flies/mosquitos in the last section in summer.
- Difficulty (check this link if new here, this is not your standard HK hiking web): 5/10. All the waterfalls are climbable. No dangerous, no high cliffs. Side ribbon paths if you do not dare climb them anyhow. You will need to get, at least, your shoes wet, but that’s the fun of this! You might find people around. Becoming more popular among hiking groups.
- The map
And the Garmin track of the full stream, Tsuen Wan to the stream hike up, trail running down to Tsuen Wan. Rte Twisk to the stream, alternative tributary, down through McLehose to the bus stop in Rte Twisk.
If you want to do the red path, you will need to arrive at the lower start of the stream. You can hike up from Tsuen Wan station. One option marked with the orange line. Otherwise, take transportation up to Chuen Lung. Stairs down on the right in this bridge to get into the stream.
You will pass this river house and you are on your way up.
Soon you will need to get your shoes wet. This area is not especially nice. Little falls and vegetation.
If you want to directly start in the nicer part, you can just continue up the road and take this concrete path on your right into a local neighborhood.
In five minutes time, you will arrive at the stream. Down next to a bridge again.
A little dam.
There are some little forks along the way, but mostly they take you to the same place. Try to find those with less vegetation or you will need to crawl a bit.
Moving forward you will find tons of pools good for dipping into. This stream is perfect for summer hot days.
You can try to walk on the rocks and avoid big parts of “in the water” sections.
But I highly prefer enjoying it in. Crystal clear water every time gone there.
As I already mentioned you might find hiking groups on your way. Here some 50-60 year old hikers enjoying their day and letting us pass: “ga yao(加油), ga yao!” 😛
There are ribbons
marking the way. Although most of the route is simple to navigate.
Finally arriving at the waterfall section (marked in the map up).
Perfect for having “a shower”
and continue your ascent.
There are alternative dry paths marked with ribbons. If you feel comfortable though, go into the falls themselves.
Relatively good grip rocks to step on. Help yourself with your hands (gloves recommended).
Only big fork where you will need to decide where to go. Joan (cut by my panorama app) heading in the picture to the left path.
Both tributaries are interesting. The one on the right allows you to go higher up in the mountain.
It has a slightly higher waterfall, where you will find ropes and others to help you on its side. Although not really necessary.
The jungle little by little starts to get more dense and mosquitos and flies can be flying annoyingly around you. Pretty pics otherwise.
Till you arrive at the bridge and the concrete road.
I would advise stopping here if you just want and easy stream hike. Next section gets bit trickier. Navigating in the dense vegetation becomes more tedious and there are no significant waterfalls or anything worthwhile.
Continue up and you will arrive at the MacLehose trail, quite close to the peak of Tai Mo Shan. Little spring/fountain perfect to clean all your gear and start your way down.
If in the mentioned fork you turn left instead you will be walking next to waterfalls too
Behind some of the hills hiked and the Tsing Yi bridge.
Less steep waterfalls that you can continue climbing within.
The forest also starts to get denser here soon. Mosquitoes…
Up, up, up.
More showers
and last bath.
Bit more of climbing
and soon the slope will become less and less steep. Time to find a way out.
It should be quite easy. With several ribboned paths around, or just heading NE or NW direction connecting with the concrete road. In our case we went NE to end up again next to another spring where to clean our gear. Walk on the concrete and you will arrive here. Connection again with the MacLehose section 8. Go down toward the kiosk.
You can do it on the concrete if you are lazy or in a rush. I will suggest taking the dirt path around instead.
In both cases, you will arrive at the kiosk.
From where (just some more meters down and right) you can take a bus. Or continue down, through the Rotary Club Park nature trail
and others down, passing next to cute paddies,
to Tsuen Wan.
Update 2018:
A video with the most interesting parts of the stream (right on the main fork, see 1m43s)
and pictures in Instagram
June 2021. Updated map (how to download to your phone offline maps)
See full screen & Garmin track of the stream (red) avoiding the first not so interesting section.
Pics of that day.
August 10, 2020 at 6:50 pm
hi! my friend and i did this route today (10 aug 2020, weather was fine, no rain, last time it rained was prob 4 days ago) it took us nearly 5 hours to walk the stream. it was completely spider webby! we probably spent about 45 mins stopping taking photos or swimming. we couldnt find the bridge. we did this walk because the difficulty rating was lower than ma dai stream. in ma dai we normally just get to the swimming pool part of ma dai and exit there, and maybe the top bit of madai is harder but we thought this was harder than ma dai lower because the stream was full of water today. and there are no ribbons till u get quite far up to the top. the exit is quite overgrown and bushy and we exited onto the road maybe halfway between the car park and the youth hostel. it was a really fun walk but i completely underestimated the difficulty and time to do it. great crystal water. so many spiders everywhere.
August 15, 2020 at 10:26 am
Hi Jan Wang.
Answering all your comments with links to everything written about for reference to future readers:
– This stream is under Tai Mo Shan, the highest peak in Hong Kong + has several small tributaries connecting with it. I would definitely expect quite some flow even without rain in the previous days
– Spider webby. That’s good! 😉 You were the first one to enjoy the stream, at least that day. Streams and narrow paths are spider territory, even more, if not frequently hiked. You might find quite some more wild life so better be prepared
– Difficulty, as linked in every post, is more focused in real “technical” difficulty and consequences than distance or others. In general, the scrambling and jumping required in Ma Tai if doing it “the adventurous” way or if you did not take the very best route was a bit trickier. Nevertheless, since I wrote about that route (2016) the stream has become more popular, sometimes even crowded, and the safest routes are more obvious now. Therefore I have decreased the difficulty grading there a bit.
– Ribbons. In general, we have too many of them in HK. Once upon a time, they were set only in confusing locations to guide safely hikers to main paths. Now more and more groups want to put their own throughout the full path, just for having their name around, or cause they are too big a group to be hiking together… In any case, the feeling that I had in Tai Cho every time up there was that there were enough to guide hikers new to the route if they had checked basic information and had a minimal map with them. But sometimes ribbons can fall or be removed, so do not take them for granted. Explained in the Stream hiking 101 and Maps sections within Preparations
Enjoy up there!