First Trip To Deiji Reservoir (德基水庫)

Of all the reservoir trips I've made, this was by far the most difficult and exhausting. I have been looking forward to this trip for more than two years. Deiji reservoir (德基水庫) lies in the highest, eastern extremity of Taichung (台中) just below the township of Lishan (梨山) at an altitude of 1,400 meters above sea level. No other reservoir in Taiwan lies at such an elevation. Deiji reservoir is also Taiwan's most remote reservoir due not to its height, but to the destruction of a critical section of the central cross-island highway by the 1999 earthquake (and a subsequent typhoon a few years later), thus the reservoir cannot be reached directly from the nearest city - Taichung city - but must instead be approached indirectly, either from Taiwan's east coast in Hualien county, or from the central, landlocked and mountainous county of Nantou to the south. I took the latter option last weekend, after first reaching Nantou county from Tainan city further to the south via the railway system, and then driving up to the reservoir on motorbike.

I took the Saturday 12.20am midnight train from Tainan city to Ershui (二水) in Changhua county (彰化) arriving at 2.05am and then dozed off for a couple of hours in Ershui station before switching to the 4.45am train to Checheng (車埕) in Nantou (南投) which arrived at 5.35am. This time, there was no maintenance needed on the bike and so after I tied up my tripod, got my gear sorted out and got the bike's engine to start, I was straight on the road (the 131) up to Puli township (埔里) arriving at about 6.15am. I left Checheng at about 5.50am so that was a 25 minute drive. I stopped at Puli for gas and a quick cup of coffee, and then straight onto highway 14 to start the ascent to Wushe (霧社). Just before the summit at Wushe at a little before 7am, I came across an overturned delivery truck...

I stopped to help the driver but he was OK and climbed out of the cabin under his own powers whilst a police officer looked on. Nobody else was hurt, so I headed off quickly, mindful of the time. I didn't stop in Wushe, but got straight onto the 14_A whilst the traffic was thin and headed straight up past Cinjing farm and the Swiss-style hotels on the way eventually to the Hehuanshan range. I made a brief stop at the last 7-11 to pick up some sandwiches and a bottle of water, and then I was off again. My carburetor was still jittery at times as it had been on the previous weekend, but I was nontheless quicker on my way up the mountain. I reached the peak, the Wuling pass, just before 8am, which was excellent time...

The views of course are spectacular and are so long before you reach the Wuling pass...

On both this trip and the previous weekend's trip, I was struck by how every single person up there could not stop grinning; there is nothing particularly special about the place, in the sense of anything to do, apart from the fact that it is the highest place accessible by public road in Taiwan. I only stopped for a few minutes to both take pictures and exercise my cramped limbs and joints a little; after hours on end of driving a motorbike, the fixed position and helmet begin to wear you down. This time there was a girl with her family who wanted her picture taken with me after I had taken their pictures...

This time I was much better prepared for the cold temperatures with my new jacket and a pair of cargo pants, though underneath I was still wearing only the T-shirt. A short while further down the northern side of the mountain I stopped at the service station for hot water and decided to add the sweater to my layers before descending to the junction of the 14_A and the 8. It is a steep descent but it didn't take too long to reach the junction and tunnel through to the 8, perhaps about twenty to thirty minutes. The 8 itself is a wonderful road, and its' surface is mostly good quality and along its' entire length from the 14_A to Lishan is only blighted by bumps and bruises in one place in particular plus a few landslide management areas. I arrived in Lishan, an important tea growing mountain town, at about 9.30am and stopped to fill up with gas. Here is the view on approach to Lishan (the majority of the town is situated on the other side of that mountain in the immediate distance)...

Delighted as I was with my time, I declined the chance to stop and rest and eat and drink - instead I drove straight through the town and out to the gas station to refill (I was on less than half a tank, after having filled up at Puli township). I did a little bit of stretching while the girl filled up my gas tank. She said that Deiji reservoir was another half an hour away, but I found the body of the reservoir in about ten minutes and arrived at the checkpoint on the way to the dam itself at 9.50am. At first the security guard was adamant that I could not go through, but when I explained what I was doing, what I wanted and that I had come all the way from Tainan to see this, he relented. However, I had to leave my bike at the checkpoint and he gave me a lift on the truck down the admittedly very dangerous road toward the management center. There, he introduced me to the attached police officer who then called the management office who then sent a member of staff to bring me some literature. I then asked if I could take pictures and they very kindly drove me up to the management office itself and showed me around. They allowed me to take all the pictures I wanted and answered all of my questions (though in Chinese, so some bits and pieces escaped me). This was me kneeling on the steel viewing pedestal overlooking the downstream face of the dam...

Below is another shot of the dam, taken with the 10mm, that captures the bottom shelf of the dam as well as the main body of the reservoir on the other side. The dam is 180 meters high (the same as the Three Gorges Dam in China), and the design is a double curved arch with variable radius, which means that the dam is built on two curves, one on the horizontal plane and one on the vertical plane both with radii that decrease with distance from the center of the crest...

Immediately below its' crest the dam has five hydraulic gates for the release of water and there are an additional two release pipes halfway up the dam...

Below: looking across the reservoir to the mountainside along which highway 8, the central cross-island highway, gingerly creeps along. The two landslide areas are not the only ones, but they are the chief reason for the checkpoint on the other side; the larger of the two has one particularly massive boulder only partially embedded into the mountainside, which, if it were to be loosened by rain, would knock out yet another section of the road. These areas have to be constantly managed to try to avoid that kind of thing happening, and for this reason (as well as for public safety) traffic is tightly controlled...

Looking directly southward to the main sluiceway gate assembly; it is from this point that water leaves the reservoir both to feed the powerhouse of the hydroelectric plant and to re-form the Deiji river below on its' way down the mountains to the Taichung coastline...

A closer look at the sluiceway gate assembly with its' five gates...

Although I was allowed to take whatever pictures I wanted, I declined to ask whether I could enter onto the concourse of the assembly itself - partly because I didn't want to seem pushy, and partly because I was beginning to be concerned about my time expenditure given that I had to be back in Tainan as early in the evening as I could possibly manage. Instead I turned to photograph the switch yard for the hydroelectric power plant. The road leading up to the switch yard and the management offices was prefaced by a bronze of Jiang Kai-shek, the former KMT dictator...

A sign in front of the switch yard detailing the vital statistics...

A view downstream toward the first of several check-dams and weirs...

When I was done, I insisted the engineers go back to work so I wouldn't take up any more of their time and I walked back to the police sentry gates. I left at about 12pm, but since the guard officer had left to discharge other duties and the engineers had returned to their jobs (or possibly their lunch), I had to walk all the way back up the road to the checkpoint where my motorbike was waiting for me. I was famished by that time and looking forward to getting a bite to eat, but I took more pictures on the walk up, determined to get as many as I could without taking any costly detours. Here is a view from the south looking northward toward the sluiceway gate assembly...

Another view from further up the road toward the upstream face of the arch dam. Notice the water spilling out into the reservoir from a hole in the mountainside on the right hand side of the image...

Another, more square-on view of the upstream side of the arch dam from a higher elevation...

I reached the checkpoint at 12.30pm, and got back on the motorbike to leave. From further back along the road, well after the checkpoint, I stopped to take some parting shots of the dam and its' surroundings. Here is a shot taken with the 250mm with the dam off to the left, and the diversion tunnel spilling water into the reservoir on the right...

A view over the body of the reservoir looking back eastward toward the tapering river entry point...

Another view over the reservoir body looking back westward...

Looking directly northward over the reservoir to the rilled mountainsides that hem it in...

The tapering point - where the Deiji river enters the reservoir (I took this shot with my phone)...

On the way back I only stopped briefly in Lishan to buy a bag of pears (a bag of five - which only cost me NT$75 even though I was expecting to pay about twice that). On leaving Lishan I was still wearing only my T-shirt, having strapped my heavy jacket to the back of my rucksack by bungee cord, but as the 8 started to climb, and climb and climb it got colder and colder and I eventually stopped to put the jacket back on again. By the time I had battled my way through the tourist buses and slow cars along the 8 and back up along the steep switchbacks of the 14_A to return to the Hehuanshan service station, it was 2pm, and clouds were beginning to float in from the surrounding valleys...

I left the service station after a few minutes of stretching and a quick bowl of crappy supermarket noodles, and made it back to the Wuling pass shortly afterward...

I took another short break here for more stretching and then I hopped back on the motorbike to roll down past Cinjing farm to Wushe where I finally stopped at the 7-11 for coffee and to do yet more stretching. On that route there was one car driver in particular who was criminally irresponsible - only narrowly avoiding crashes several times after overtaking the convoy with oncoming traffic and around the odd sharp corner. I swore at him and regretted not having brought my GoPro camera to record his reckless driving.

For the remainder of the journey, I left Wushe at about 3.15pm and got down to Puli township at 4pm, and then finally arrived at Checheng station at 4.30pm to take the 5pm train back to Ershui in Changhua, and then the 6pm train back to Tainan. I got into the house at about 8.30pm, which is the longest I've ever left the dogs alone for. It was a fantastic trip, but very expensive in terms of time and for that reason I am not eager to repeat it this weekend.