About Taroko Gorge Waterfalls (太魯閣的瀑布 [Tàilǔgé de Pùbù])
The Taroko Gorge Waterfalls (太魯閣的瀑布 [Tàilǔgé de Pùbù]) were my excuse to celebrate the many unnamed and named waterfalls in this web page. The Taroko Gorge itself was perhaps Taiwan’s most famous natural attraction as it featured very tall vertical-walled gorges composed of marble and cut primarily by the Liwu River (立霧溪 [Lìwū Xī]). We took part of the Cross-Island Highway (Hwy 8) that went within the gorge making for a vertigo-inducing and neck-cranking experience. In a way, it reminded me very much of the Cares Gorge in Spain as they both featured roads or trails that used to be created for the purposes of hydroelectricity. The Taroko Gorge felt a little more developed because they let vehicular traffic (including tour buses) through the narrow roads while the Cares Gorge was foot traffic only. Nonetheless, they both featured many tunnels and suspension bridges as well as a series of waterfalls plunging right into the depths of the gorge. Perhaps from a waterfalling standpoint, the waterfalls of the Taroko Gorge were more legitimate as they weren’t primarily caused by overflow spillage from ditches like in the Cares Gorge. Instead, many of these waterfalls came from springs where water would emerge from potholes within the marble in addition to the conventional waterfalls tumbling down grooves and gullies in the cliffs as well.
During our visit in October 2016, we aimed to visit the Baiyang Waterfall, which was perhaps the most significant of the waterfalls in the Taroko Gorge. Unfortunately, the verticality of the gorge combined with the unusually warm Summer and Autumn (it still felt like Summer during our end-of-October visit) resulted in several thunderstorms and typhoons that battered Taiwan and resulted in landslides that limited access along Hwy 8 while also closing the trail to the Baiyang Waterfall (we couldn’t even get to the village of Tianxiang [天祥 or Tiānxiáng]; meaning “thinking of Heaven”, I think). The Taiwan government provides updates for road conditions and trail conditions, which we found useful as we were anxiously hoping against hope that the Baiyang Waterfall Trail would open when we’d showed up. But alas, our visit was limited to a small section of the Taroko Gorge (focusing primarily on the Swallow Grotto portion) where we encountered mostly unnamed waterfalls. We also stopped by the permanent waterfall tumbling beneath the Shrine of the Eternal Spring (長春祠 [Chángchūn cí]; see picture at the top of this page). I acknowledge that we really need to come back and do a repeat visit under more benign conditions, but until that happens, what you see here is all we can show you. That said, even just what we’re showing on this page gives you a glimpse of the kind of scenery that made this place famous internationally.
Our visit pretty much involved driving as deep into the Taroko Gorge as we could (given the circumstances). We ultimately stopped the car at the Swallow Grotto (燕子口 [Yànzǐkou]) area and walked around the immediate area. We wound up walking about a length of 2.6km round trip (or 1.3km in each direction), and this was reflected in the walking difficulty rating you see at the top of this page. The rest of our time spent at the Taroko Gorge was pretty much auto-touring where the remaining attractions as we headed back towards the east were roadside attractions (like the Eternal Spring Shrine). Parking was only available in designated spots (basically where the lines along the road were not red; see directions below). It took us over an hour to do the roadside walk with frequent photo stops. For the Shrine of the Eternal Spring, there was definitely a fair bit of parking spaces to take in this spot (see directions below again), but the trail to get right up to the shrine was closed during our visit. There were other attractive spots to take photos, but we had to pick and choose our spots under such limited time. So if one were to have more time and walk (better yet bike) the gorge, then many of the attractions and photo spots would less likely be missed as opposed to if you were on a bus or driving by car with limited pullouts or parking spaces.
Something quirky that we saw during our walk was that most of the visitors were wearing hard hats to apparently minimize injury should a rock fall on you. Mom and I wondered if even those helmets would be of any help should one be unfortunate enough to have a rock fall hundreds of meters onto one’s head, but I guess in the off-chance the rocks were the size of a golf ball or smaller then perhaps it would be of help. However, if it’s any kind of rock the size of a tennis ball or bigger, then I don’t think the helmet will help much in terms of preventing a fatality. Not everyone wore one of these hard hats, but they were offered for free near the mouth of the Swallow Grotto area (there may be other spots where they’re distributed). So that underscored the inherent danger of being within this area, but I’ve learned that often the most beautiful places in the world also tend to be the most deadly since the very forces that created such scenery also tended to be the same forces that could be destructive as well.
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