This route has not been walked, so there are no measured segment times on this page: the times are transcribed verbatim from Sunriver Culture's step-time diagrams and are a shared yardstick, not my pace. Every station's position and name was checked one by one and follows Sunriver's naming, so names and elevations match what hikers recognise.Route is for reference only.This route has not been walked yet. Six days, five of Taiwan's hundred peaks (Qilai North Peak, Panshishan, Taroko Mountain, Liwuzhushan, Patuolushan); the line is computed by BRouter over OpenStreetMap's hiking network. Eight things to note:
- The approach has been walked. Day one's six stations (Qilai Trailhead, Xiao Qilai, Heishuitang Hut, Chenggong Cabin, the Main/North junction, Qilai Cabin) and day two's Qilai North Peak all reuse the coordinates from my own August 2026 Qilai Main/North trip — same point, same name, same elevation. Past the North Peak the route turns onto the east ridge, and for the next five days there is no maintained trail
- The shape of the line has been checked against three public recorded walks. One of them covers the full six days (August 2021, 45 named waypoints): median deviation 14 metres over the whole route, nine points in ten within 51 metres, 173 at worst. All 33 stations fall within 36 metres of at least one of those tracks, and 27 of them within 8. The other two (August 2024, October 2025) cover only parts of the route; where their numbers are large it means that record never went there, not that the routes disagree. This is checking the answer, not sourcing it: neither the line nor the stations depend on those records, and their elevations are not adopted at all
- The K in the forest-road station names is a milepost, not a distance. The 12K hut and the 6K high-traverse junction turn out to be the two endpoints of OpenStreetMap's own forest-road way, and waypoints from two unrelated recorded walks land 12 and 7 metres from them — topology and footprints pointing at the same spot, so neither station is a guess
- Two campsites on this route are both named for a three-way junction, and they are not the same place. Sunriver's G10 chart gives that name to the one at Taroko Mountain's north saddle — this site calls it North Saddle Campground — and calls the one before Patuolushan the three-way-junction campground; OpenStreetMap names them the other way round. Matching by name inverts the whole thing, so the two names here were settled by measuring against the neighbouring stations.
- Official (Taroko National Park's permit system): the Qilai East Ridge has needed no mountain-entry permit since 21 February 2020. The same system says the 9K hut on the Yanhai forest road is close to ruined and not recommended for sleeping in, and asks walkers to carry their own shelter. This itinerary does not stay at 9K, but day six passes it
- Day six is the longest of the trip: 15.5 km and 2,870 m of descent, ten hours by the chart. The cableway at Cableway Head No. 1 hauled timber and is not for riding; the route drops into the creek and climbs to the Yue Fei Pavilion, which Sunriver gives 150 minutes
- There is no guide's itinerary. The six-day split comes from Hiking Biji's route page (MG chose that option on 2026-09-10), and every overnight matches the complete 2021 recorded walk. Sunriver's G09 and G10 charts sum to 49 hours 20 minutes, an average of 8 hours 13 minutes a day.
- On the ground, follow the actual conditions and your guide. Once it has been walked, this page will be replaced by my own recorded track
The switch points between full pack and summit pack are at North Saddle Campground (Day 04) and Three-way Junction Campground (Day 05). Actual conditions on the ground take priority.
