River trekking
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River Trekking is a form of hiking or outdoor adventure activity, particularly popular in Hong Kong, and, in some ways, similar to canyoning or canyoneering. River trekking is a combination of trekking and climbing and sometimes swimming along the river. It involves particular techniques like rock climbing, climbing on wet surface, understanding the geographical features of river and valleys, knotting, dealing with sudden bad weather and find out possible exits from the river.
River Trekking in Hong Kong
River trekking has developed in Hong Kong since mid-20th century. Currently, there are numerous hiking groups organize regular trekking activities in Hong Kong. However, river trekking is a bit underground. There are no formal schools, formal coaches, formal sites, official recognition or qualifications on river trekking, even though it involves particular skills and certain level of risks. In Hong Kong, any natural rivers can be found in the country side, there would be the possible sites for river trekking.
Attractions and Popularity
River trekking is especially popular in Hong Kong because it is totally a surprise that in this highly developed city still preserves numbers of excellent geographical features in rivers in countryside. Through river trekking, it is possible to access numerous waterfalls, large ponds, pod holes, other special geographical features as well as special spieces of animals and plants. Also, it is a very cheap activities in comparing with other challenging outdoor activities like rock climbing, rowling and wind-surfing. No training courses are needed because there are no one in Hong Kong would provide trainings about river trekking. However, river trekking has been very long as one of the most popular outdoor activities in Hong Kong, even though most of the river trekking routes or sites are indicated as "danger" or "no entry" by government. There is a trend that more and more foreigners or even tourists to join this activity.
Nine Big Rivers
Nine Big Rivers (九大石澗)are the nine rivers particularly popular for river trekking lovers in Hong Kong. Nine Big Rivers include:
- Tai Shing River (大城石澗),located in Tsuen Wan
- Wan Chung River (橫涌石澗), located in Tai Po
- Ng Tung River (梧桐石澗), located in Tai Po
- Wong Lung River (黃龍石澗), located in Lantau Island near Tung Chung
- Sheng Luk River (雙鹿石澗), located in Sai Kung
- Man Cheng Po (萬丈布), located in West of Lantau Island
- Lotus River (蓮花石澗), located in Tai Lam Country Park
- Ngon Sam River (昂深石澗), located in Lantau Island near Great Buddha
- Ping Nam River (屏南石澗), located closing to the border between Hong Kong and Mainland China
Rating of Difficuties
As river trekking have certain level of risks, experienced river trekkers or hiking groups have developed rating systems about difficuties on different rivers in Hong Kong for River Trekking. The ratings usually are various from 1 to 5 stars, even though a few rivers can be more than 5 stars because of their extreme difficulties. Such ratings are largely subjective, depends largely on river trekker's own experience. Therefore, different people or hiking groups would give different number of stars on the same river. According to Hong Kong Adverntruer, an English Website about hiking and river trekking in Hong Kong, difficult scale of different rivers as:
- 1 star: can be handled by normal healthy persons
- 2 stars: not too easy
- 3 stars: fairly difficult
- 4 stars: difficult, absolutely not for beginners
- 5 stars: very difficult, very demanding in term of strength and skill
Risk and Danger
River trekking has certain level of risk. There are occasional accidents in river trekking in Hong Kong, including falls from steep cliffs or waterfalls, drownings, exhaustion, or getting lost.
There are risks in river trekking should take care of. Firstly, sudden change of weather like rainstorm can cause rapid lifting up of water table in the river. River water would also speed up heavily. Then the possible paths or climbing areas inside the river valley would reduce suddenly in a very short period. Besides, bad weather or misty weather would also cause low visibility. Low visibilty may come in sudden which river trekkers cannot get used to in a short time. Therefore, a torch(probably, a head-torch) is a must for river trekking.
Secondly, the steep cliff inside river valley requires certain level of rock climbing skills. However, because the moisturing environment inside river valley, some rock rock surfaces would be very wet and some rocks would be very loose even they appear as very solid. Dealing with such wet climbing conditions, a pair of professional river trekking boots can help.
Damage to Stream Systems Caused by River Trekking
Due to the increasing popularity of river trekking, the activity has resulted in some damage to certain streams in Hong Kong. The most noticeable kinds of damage are:
- Rubbish left by river trekking groups
- Use of aerosol spraypaints to mark route directions on rocks and trees
- Discarded climbing equipment and unnecessary bolting
- Damage to trees and other flora when used as leverage by trekkers
- Graffiti written in paint, ink and correction fluid
See also
- Canyoning
- Hiking
- Geography of Hong Kong
- Country parks and conservation in Hong Kong
- Ecology of Hong Kong
External links
- HK adventurer, an English website about hiking in Hong Kong includes many river trekking routes
- http://www.hkadventurer.com
- HK Waterfall, an English website about waterfalls and river trekking in Hong Kong
- http://hkwaterfall.net/
- 越野雄心, a river trekking website (in Chinese) http://hk.geocities.com/outdoorriver/river.htm
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