Lion’s Rock Hike

Lion’s Rock Hike

There is one thing about Hong Kong that is quite unique. That is how easy to go on spectacular hikes is. Not only are there dozens of hiking trails available within less than twenty minutes away from the busiest part of the city, but also the weather is extremely comfortable for such activities for most of they year. With that in mind, I continued my hiking endeavors. This time, I was going to climb Lion’s Rock, one of the most famous hikes in Kowloon side. The premise was simple. My friend and I were going to walk on the trail for roughly an hour and reach the landmark known as Lion’s Rock. This rock formation resembles the head of a lion when viewed from far away, hence the name. We took the subway from the University and after approximately 15 minutes we arrived to the closest available station to the beginning of the trail.

We began the hike from a quite unorthodox path. The path was very narrow and wasn’t clearly visible at many parts. My friend saw online that this specific trail was a much “funner” climb and for that reason he persuaded me that we should start from there. Despite, the narrowness of this trail we were able to follow it for quite a while. At certain parts of the trail, you could see ropes attached to the ground that you could pull on in order to climb on some moderately inclined and slippery ground. About an hour in our hike, we realized that something was a bit wrong. The path was getting narrower and narrower. Certain parts of the path seemed impossible to climb, at least for average climbers such as our selves. Even though in the beginning we would see path demarcations around us in the forms of colored flags, after a while we reached a point where even those flags were not visible. Yet, even though the path had gotten much harder to traverse, we were still able to go on. The only problem is that we could not go back, since the path would become steeper and steeper. At some point, we realized that we were actually walking on a water path. In other words, we had somehow derailed from the original trail and accidentally followed a clearing in the branches that appeared to be the continuation of the official trail.

At that point, we knew we were totally lost in the woods…