Mini gorge with deep pools starting almost from the very city. Tricky & dirty in that section. Cute & crystalline the upper you go.
- Beauty/fun: 4/10 surprising small creek, deep pools, a challenging wall, mixture of clear and dirty water.
- Difficulty (check this link if new here, this is not your standard HK hiking web): 5/10 if avoiding the next to the cave climb. I have not tested this yet. Bring 20m rope if you do to help weaker buddies. Some wading, tiny swim, potentially slippery rocks under. Upper significantly easier. It can be thorny in some small areas.
- The map (how to download to your phone offline maps)
See full screen & the Garmin track.
Continuing all these hills exploration I ended up in 火炭坑 = Fo Tan creek. I had zero expectations, but again I was surprised.
Fo Tan MTR. Walk 15 minutes in the city and here the bottom entry.
Video.
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I found turtles & reptiles from the start. But also not completely clean water & quite some trash. A little later, nice water carved walls and pools to wade/swim in. And the first and only tricky spot in the full route. You need to swim this second pool (0:36). Relatively stagnant water, not the most appealing. At the very end a small cave.
I tried to climb on its left (0:49), but it looked tricky and once I was alone… Pass. So I swam back and tried to scramble on the very beginning of the pool at the right side. Trees & roots to help. But… Nope. Tricky loose soil & dense vegetation. No traces of previous hikers. I used the thin rope I had with me to safely climb down to the stream level again (0:57). I decided to abort this section.
I went back to the starting point. I used a hose with clean water to shower myself and went up on the concrete path up to the first bridge (1:00). From here I went downstream to check what I had missed. Nothing of interested but the cave area itself. From atop I could guess that previous hikers might have climbed next to the cave, but on its very right. I could see an old rope set there. May be to try another day.
I continued upstream. After the bridge there is a dam. I climbed on its right (1:21) and after that the water quality improves extremely. Clean clean. So much so that some villagers drink it directly from the stream. Or that is what one of them told me. He had set pipes to gather water from the stream and tons of constructions around it. My guess: completely illegal. Apart from that tons of fish and other fauna.
Upper the stream starts to bifurcate. I checked various tributaries. Nothing spectacular, nor too much hiked. I could see a few ribbons but also thorny areas.
On the map I have left quite some info for your reference. My preference, if doing one tributary only, would be to go up right on the 8 fork and in 10 turn left.
The hiking path on top crosses a house and fences set by a villager. With potential dogs too. Be careful. The first one there was none. The second, video recording, the guy let me pass with no problem controllingthe dogs. Easy run back to the city.
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