Qixing Mountain (七星山)

As alluded to in my previous post, I wanted to climb a mountain this weekend... and so I did. The great thing about Taipei is that it's close to a whole score of them, some of which lie within Yangmingshan National Park. I chose the tallest peak to climb, being Qixing, or Seven Star. It's no Mauna Kea, but it was a pretty challenging 1120m, namely due to the entire climb consisting of stairs of varying degrees of steepness and slipperiness (damp moss-covered stones). It made the CN Tower climb seem like a joke.  All it took was a 30 minute bus ride from Jiantan station on R5 (once I figured out which side to actually catch the bus from).  Given its proximity to Taipei City, there weren't as many people as I thought there'd be, thankfully.  What a great experience, to be climbing a mountain through the clouds on a 21C mid-December day.