A tiny creek heading down to Pak Lap Bay in Saikung. It can have decent waterfalls immediately after rain. The exit was a pain though.

  • Beauty/fun: 3/10 if you are around and unexpectedly your plan goes to hell, because of a sudden change in weather conditions, and you are a bit hardcore “I want to do something”, this is for you 😆 If not I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. Relatively small, super long logistics required, too much bush fight in my way.
  • Difficulty (check this link if new here, this is not your standard HK hiking web): 6/10 the high scrambling had good holds even completely wet. But the navigation of the last part of the stream and the hike back to the road was very tricky. I guess that in early summer or late spring the path might be more open, with less vegetation after some hikers traffic. Bring, in any case, full clothe cover and at least pruners. First stream in a long while where I wouldn’t have mind to have a proper machete to open my way.
  • The map (how to download to your phone offline maps)

See full screen & the Garmin track.

Summer had left her hiking shoes behind in Pak Lap after our kayak & mini coasteering day in Tung Sam Chau. The shop kindly kept them for us. For weeks there was no good weekend to go there. So eventually I decided to go with bad weather forecast. What I was not expecting was such a heavy rain 😅 Flooded all around Pak Lap.

Transportation is the same explained several times before. Check the previous post. This time, with almost no people in the area it was quite fast, no queuing, with full public transportation.

I got down from the mini bus at the trail head. I went down to the beach area. I waited a little while at the shop after taking the shoes and once the heaviest rain stopped I went to check the creek. The lower part was completely overflowed.

Therefore I went up a bit on the stairs until I found a faint path back to the stream. There is a fence there. I’m guessing to prevent the caws going to the village below. I spent a bit of time checking the area and water flow. Eventually, it looked safe enough to try it. Just in case, I had all my emergency gear with me: full clothe cover, pruners, emergency blanket, extra clothes, food, two pair of shoes (Five Tens for slippery rocks & the lugged NB for muddy surfaces), first aid kit, etc. So the plan was to cautiously go up and if by chance the heavy rain started again or a thunderstorm approached (it didn’t look like) exit the stream with the pruners to a side and wait patiently for the situation to improve. The creek is small enough that it looked doable. Please, only do these things if you are experienced enough…

The first fork was just immediately after the fence end. The left tributary had significantly more water. But I had seen the top of that one from the path and I knew from my check prior to going there. I could see a huge waterfall atop, but it looks like a previous landslide area.

So it would require very very careful navigation… Additionally, I could not see any traces of anyone hiking there + dense bush. So I decided to continue on the significantly more calm right tributary. Which seems is the main one in no heavy rain days anyhow.

In little time (0:33) I found a path on the left side of the stream. I guess the way for maintenance to the water gathering structure a bit upper (1:00). After this I could still find some hiker marks and the first big waterfall (1:40).

I put my Five Tens on just in case and scramble it on the right side. Good holds to do so. A little after the second big waterfall (2:18) the vegetation starts to increase a lot. So I am wandering if people exit somehow through some path after the orange ribbon that you can see in the last pic above and at the video at 2:55. In my case, I continued and it was an intense fight… I used the pruners a lot to be able to continue relatively close to the stream until eventually I gave up (3:25) and I opened my way to the faint path atop. Initially I tried to follow it South direction to go to Tung A. But it was quite complicated/bushy and eventually I went back to the road instead. Too much bush fight for a day. Instead a bit of jogging and check Dai Hang creek (next post).

Everything you should know before stream hiking.