Fifth Trip To Shihmen Reservoir (石門水庫) & Second Trip To The Ronghua Dam (榮華壩)

Another Sunday, another reservoir trip to northern Taiwan. As usual I arrived in Hsinchu at 8am, and immediately hopped onto the motorbike to get to the reservoir as soon as possible. This time my first objective was to get to Shihmen mountain overlooking the reservoir, so I took the 120, then the 115, then the 118 and then highway 3 before hitting the turn-off for the Shihmen mountain trail. I made it there just before 9.30am though I was slightly delayed by having to buy a new pair of elastic cables to tie up my tripod to the bike (I had forgotten to bring them).

Contrary to the weather forecast, which was that it would be raining all day in both Hsinchu and Taoyuan counties, the weather was in fact quite good with only the slight problem of there being the usual atmospheric haze partially obscuring the mountains. As Shihmen mountain overlooks the reservoir to the west this meant that I also had the morning sun directly overhead which exacerbates the effect of the haze in whitening the sky. Nonetheless I was not too disappointed with the shots I took...

I then headed off downhill to the little Buddhist retreat which affords a better angle toward the upstream face of the dam and spillway gates...

The same perspective below, but drawn back somewhat to encompass the view over the aft-bay downstream from the dam...

And below... myself standing on the edge of the patio with a twenty foot drop into the garden to my left. I might not look particularly happy in that shot, but I was reasonably pleased; this was the first time I had visited Shihmen reservoir without large helpings of mash-potato like cumulus clouds clogging up the skies...

The next objective was to head back down the other side of the mountain and enter the reservoir premises proper so as to follow the road up from the dam crest as it snakes its way up eastward to another vantage point...

On the northern spit that forces the major bend in the overall shape of Shihmen reservoir, there is a small pavillion and a minor toll booth for the road. The pavillion is a popular rest stop and it sits atop a crest looking out westward back across the reservoir to the dam with the several peaks of Shihmen mountain at the far side...

After I packed my gear up again to take off for the far eastern end of the reservoir near Fuxing, I stopped to admire an old BMW motorbike that had been well-kept and brought out for a Sunday morning spin by its' owner...

It only had a single cylinder 250cc engine, but it was a topper little thing with the front indicator lights being placed at the end of the handlebars so that they could also serve as the rear-facing indicator lights at the same time, which was textbook engineering elegance.

On the way around to the reservoir's far-eastern end, I couldn't help but stop at several points to take in the views. Here is one from under a tree looking back westward toward the other side of that northern spit after the major bend in the reservoir...

Here is another a little further upstream looking directly southward - note the tourist pleasure boat chugging back toward the eastern end (where the harbour lies)...

Near the harbour, I stopped off to buy another bottle of water and have a look around as I was particularly minded to photograph the remains of a tourist boat that had (presumably) been holed in an accident and then subsequently dragged up onto the southern shore and left to rot. As I was looking at it however, my eye was interrupted by a crested serpent eagle flitting about on a short peninsula jutting out from the northern shore. I immediately took out my tripod and switched over to the 300mm lens, but I had forgotten that it was still in auto-focus rather than manual and as a result all my shots were out of focus. Not exactly my finest birding moment...

I grabbed my new bottle of water and headed off to Fuxing to cross the bridge on highway 7 that follows the Dahan river upstream; at this point (getting on for 11.30am) the weather was still glorious...

My next objective was to do something a little risky and get some downstream shots looking up at the face of the Ronghua dam. First however, I decided to take a little uphill detour; after descending to the bridge that crosses the Dahan river prior to the tunnel on highway 7, I climbed up and up in the hope of finding an overlook from the east down to the Ronghua dam. As it turned out that hope was in vain, as the mountain road took me some distance to the south of the Ronghua dam whereupon it was well out of sight back around the mountains to my right. Still, the views were fantastic...

I slowly made my way back down the mountain (stuck behind a convoy of family cars) and stopped at the bridge. I had previously speculated that if there was a way down to the river bed, then it would be found somewhere near this bridge, and indeed there was...

That shot above was taken after about ten minutes walk upstream from the bridge along the river bed after having abseilled down the cliff-face using ropes that had probably been left there by enterprising fishing enthusiasts. The walk upstream took about half an hour or so, and involved picking my way between rocks and occassionally wading through shallow water; there were one or two climbs and a few uncertain moments, but nothing especially hair-raising. Naturally I concentrated on what I was doing so as to avoid accidentally twisting an ankle or something. Eventually I reached a rocky outcrop from which further progress would have been awkward but which nontheless afforded a decent enough view up to the face of the Ronghua dam. By this time there was the frequent rumbling of thunder in the distance and I predicted it would soon begin to rain...

It's a magnificent thing up close - one of only three concrete gravity arch dams in Taiwan, it stands well over thirty meters tall and I was very pleased to have reached it without anything going wrong. My only remaining task for the day was to head for home with the same hope of things not going wrong; as it began to rain on my way downstream I was slightly worried that, should it begin to pour down, the climb up the cliff-face back to the bridge could become a minor nightmare of slippery mud. As it was I managed to navigate my way back downstream without any silly slips and climb back up the cliff face whilst the rain was still a trickle.

I headed back down highway 7 and as soon as I turned right onto the 118 to take me back into Hsinchu, the clouds burst and I was soaked to the skin. I drove through the rain and after a short while I was back on a dry stretch of the 118 and the rest of my drive remained marvelously rain-free all the way back to the Hsinchu HSR station.

It was a good day's work.