Another Day At Shihmen Reservoir (石門水庫)

So yesterday I took the HSR up to Hsinchu station, and then took the taxi to Shihmen reservoir. Instead of arriving some time after 10am, I arrived at 9am. This time I immediately began the climb of Shihmen mountain and arrived at the top just after 10am; it's quite a long climb. However, as I had noted at the train station, the weather in Hsinchu / Taoyuan was not as good as the weather in Tainan - despite the weather forecast - it was far too cloudy and hazy...

It was obvious that I'd have to wait a few hours for the clouds to shift, so I decided to walk the winding road down the other side of the mountain; there were signs for some sort of cafe and I knew that it was the approximate direction to go in to find the footbridge over the reservoir I had previously seen from the dam. It was a long walk.

When I found the cafe, it was in the grounds of what used to be a children's theme park but had since been bought by a Buddhist group and turned into their own retreat. It's a bizzare place partly because the theme park features are still extant (including a miniature castle and a fifty foot figurine of a King-Kong like gorilla strangling a snake) but also because it covers the slope of a mountainside that has been partially abandoned. There are actually signs for an anti-aircraft shelter, somewhere inside the mountain...

There were other odd buildings further down the slope as well, presumably left over from the "theme park" including a small, dark building with turrets vaguely resembling those of a Russian orthodox cathedral. There were also other religious buildings belonging to the Buddhists from which some decent views over the reservoir could be had, and from where I was able to shoot a pair of crested serpent eagles...

After leaving the Buddhist look-out, I made the decision to go further down, in the speculative hope of finding the footbridge and maybe even taking photos of the upstream face of the dam and spillway gates from it. I did eventually find the footbridge, but...

 ... it was obviously derelict and rotten, and had been left that way for years. The road continued downwards from that point to the shore of the reservoir, but it was covered in slime and moss and I just knew I was going to have a hard time making it down to the bottom without landing on my backside, so I decided to head back to the top. Again, it was a long climb with a lot of steps.

The whole of Shihmen mountain is covered in caterpillars and butterflies...

... and various kinds of spiders out to eat them...

When I got back to the top of Shihmen mountain, the weather had cleared up somewhat although it was still very hazy...

By now however, it was nearly 1.30pm and I was tired and thirsty. I took a few more pictures, none of which were anywhere near as good as what I had originally hoped for today, and then I headed back to the KTV place for a drink before descending the mountain to the north entrance.

I forgot to mention... Shortly after leaving the summit, following a bend in the road, I spotted one of the eagles perched on a dead tree not more than forty feet in front of me; I froze in my tracks, and instantly knew it was a futile situation - not only had I stupidly packed the camera away in my backpack, but the bird was looking at me. The mutual stare only lasted maybe three seconds before the bird took off. I was slightly angry because it would have been a great shot and I usually make a point of remembering to keep my camera out with the 250mm attached set to 1/500 or 1/1000 and a low F-stop and either 100 or 200 ISO. Opportunities like that are rare.

I would like to get to the back of Shihmen reservoir next time to follow the river upstream and photograph some of the many check dams - if I recall correctly, Shihmen reservoir has more of these dams along its' feed river than any other reservoir in Taiwan; it is Taiwan's most intensely managed reservoir.