Monday Trip To The Ronghua Dam (榮華壩) Upstream From Shihmen Reservoir (石門水庫)

I missed my 5 a.m. alarm on Sunday morning and slept in, so instead I took the HSR train up to Hsinchu again on Monday morning since I've got three days off work (ending today). My main purpose was to get myself over to the back of Shihmen reservoir in neighbouring Taoyuan county and follow the Dahan river upstream to find the Ronghua dam (榮華壩) which, curiously, is featured in the wikipedia entry for "reservoir". I had not previously seen this, so Monday's trip was my first time and, as always, there is a certain thrill to actually being in the physical presence of what I had only previously read about online. This is myself at about 1pm with the upstream side of the dam in the background...

A note on my route: I took the 120 heading east straight out of the Hsinchu HSR station and then turned north onto highway 3 before cutting off east again on the 118 which runs around the southern side of Shihmen reservoir to exit out onto highway 7 which runs southeast following the Dahan river upstream and eventually takes you to Ilan county. The 118 is a very nice road, and I kept stopping for pictures which cost me a lot of time. Here is where the Dahan river enters into the back of Shihmen reservoir as seen from a ridge along the 118. I took my recently acquired GoPro camera with me today and shot some brief videos just to test it out, but one thing I noticed was that, although I could hear the grunting and rustling of monkeys in the trees below me, the GoPro's microphone couldn't pick it up...

This was some time before 10am and the weather was fantastic - but it wasn't to last as later in the afternoon it became overcast and dull. Before the 118 turns onto highway 7, it brings you out onto a mountainside with spectacular views over the valley below...

At exactly 11 a.m. I reached the mountainside directly opposite the Ronghua dam...

I stopped briefly to take video and talk to a few people who hopped off a tourist bus (which had pulled over on the ridge in order for a little girl with car-sickness to vomit into a bag). I soon made my way around the mountains up to the Ronghua dam itself. The caretaker had a small pack of now somewhat elderly dogs that he had taken in and they all barked at me when I rolled into the courtyard on my motorbike. I didn't have any snacks on me to dish out, so I just kneeled down and held my hand out so they could see and smell me. I talked to the caretaker for a while and he allowed me to take whatever pictures and video I wanted and was keen to answer questions. 

I like this shot, and it is very common on a google image search for "榮華壩", but I'd also like to get some close up shots from the downstream side on another visit, if possible. This image does at least allow you to see the full height of the dam and the contrast between the downstream and upstream sides, as well as the pulley-track for lowering and lifting people as well as heavy goods and (possibly) sediments from behind the dam.
   One of the questions I asked the caretaker was how high the dam was, to which he replied that it was thirty meters. Another question was how deep the water is on the upstream side, with the obvious implication that from that you could work out how much silt there is - to this question he gave a long, convoluted answer of which I could only understand bits and pieces, but one thing I did gather was that the water bureau had removed a large amount of silt at some point last year.

The road skirts around the mountainside to afford a view back toward the upstream face of the dam, from where it is possible to clearly see the entrapment pen for a diversion tunnel (to the left in the image below), which channels water several kilometers downstream to a small hydroelectric power plant at the Yihsin weir (which straddles the same river but at a lower altitude)...

I drove on upstream for several more kilometers in order to ascertain whether there was, or had once been, an access road from the mountainside down to the river bed for the movement of trucks transporting sediments and heavy goods. Although I did see one gated, and long-since overgrown area on the left hand side of the road that looked like it had previously been an access road entry point, it was obviously long-since disused. Perhaps it had been there during the initial construction of the dam some forty to fifty years ago, in which case, all of the current maintenance for the dam would have to be performed using the pulley-track that hangs down the mountainside above the dam...

I left the Ronghua dam at some point well after 1pm, with the intent of getting back to the little town of Daxi at the back of Shihmen reservoir for gasoline and food. However, I hadn't gone very far when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye that had elluded me on the way up to the Ronghua dam...

That is an inflection point for the diversion tunnel carrying water down from the Ronghua dam to the hydroelectric power plant further downstream next to the Yihsin weir. The main water exits from the windowed tunnel at the top right, but as you can see there is also a secondary source entering the penstock from the top left...

The larger hydraulic gate to the bottom left of the image, which is clearly open, is to allow the water to carry on flowing downstream through the tunnel on the way to the hydroelectric plant, whilst the gate opposite it to the bottom right of the image appears to be there to allow excess water out into a natural stream-bed in order to prevent flood damage.

I eventually made my way back downstream to the Yihsin weir and rolled up there to take a look around. There were two security guards, one of whom was relaxed and happy to talk to me (in Chinese of course) whilst the other was obviously nervous and kept asking me half-formed questions - presumably out of fear that I was a militant environmentalist out to cause trouble for his bosses! Unfortunately I have found this to be a fairly common, if not quite universal, reflex. Nonetheless I was allowed to look around on condition that I park my bike which was necessary anyway, but the views afforded from the security guard office were partial and obscured by vegetation. As I was about to leave the friendly security guard said I could take the other road down to the hydroelectric power station and take better pictures there. He was right; here is a view upstream toward the Yihsin weir itself...

It is a large weir with several lips over which the water cascades, and just a short distance downstream were the visible remains (on either side of the channel) of a previous weir which the security guard believed had been damaged beyond repair by typhoon Morakot in 2009...

 The hydroelectric power station, however, was not so easy to photograph given that it was on the same side of the river as I was but was something like fifty feet tall - there was simply no way to get the building into perspective even with my wide angle lens. To solve this problem I crossed the river and used my little, fish-eyed "GoPro" camera to take some snaps; the advantage of this camera being that it is housed in a waterproof casing, which was necessary as crossing the river was not quite a simple matter of wading across (ahem, the astute among you will read between the lines here). The GoPro is better suited for video of close-up action than for taking stills of objects at a distance though. I should be able to improve with further practice, but here is what I got out of it...

As you can see, the Yihsin hydroelectric plant is housed inside one of those 1960s concrete brutalist monstrosities - an ugly grey concrete block with tiny little peep-holes at the top instead of proper windows. The water exits the turbine and passes out through the north-east corner of the building; in order to get this shot, I did not cross here but somewhat further upstream where the water was very calm and the drag of the current was weak enough for me to cross easily in a few seconds. I would upload some of the video I shot, but the blogger format seems to have a limit of 100 MB for video, and I haven't yet figured out how to compress the files below that size on my new laptop. I also got some shots from below the power station using the DSLR...

After my little episode of frollicking among the rocks and hydropower infrastructure, I headed back onto the road and drove down to the little town of Daxi to stick some gas in the bike and get something to drink. I then drove back westward toward the front of Shihmen reservoir and I even surprised myself by remembering the route better than I expected, including a crucial poorly signposted turn-off. By this time however, the skies had become well and truly overcast and the light was fading, so the remaining pictures I shot of Shihmen reservoir ended up being unsatisfactory. These were the among the best I could manage. First, a couple of views over the harbour at the north-east end of the reservoir from just outside somebody's house...

I actually saw an Osprey there, but I was on the bike and had no chance to get the camera and long-lens out (that's the second or third good Osprey shot in northern Taiwan I've missed this summer). Second, a shot of the old dredging equipment from the 1960s following the disaster of Typhoon Gloria...

The current dredging boat in operation...

And a parting shot from the crest of Shihmen mountain. Every time I've been here, there have been too many clouds for my liking. Hopefully, I'll get here as early as possible next time on a cloudless morning for this shot (and one or two from further down the mountain)...

My next trip will be back here again to Shihmen reservoir as there are still a few things I want to get done before I shift the motorbike up to Taipei for the next big reservoir...