Getting lost on “semi-official” trails – Fei Ngo Shan

[diunisu]

Hi Everyone!

I am new on this forum and haven’t seen such topic on the existing dicussions…appologies if similar topic has been post already.

I have been hiking/running solo (no hiking tour) in Hong Kong for nearly 6 years and experienced yesterday my first unpleasant situation (getting lost and stuck in the jungle while the night was falling) on the west semi-official trail of Fei Ngo Shan ( Kowloon peak). I wanted to share this with other people on the forum and check if this already happened to some of you…

Also, I wanted to gather some information about the way those semi-official trails were actually maintained. For example, the start of the trail was quite decently marked (with small pieces of tissue) but then as I was going down, the high and dense vegetation totally covered the trail and those signals. Is there any (government) organization which usually takes care of those trails or is it from the initiative of independent hikers like me? (I am actually planning to go back to this trail and adding additional signals).

Thanks in advance for your thoughts on this!

[DocMartin Williams]

I sent Ben, the poster of comment, email:

Quote:

Did the trail have colour code on countryside series map? – codes can indicate importance of trails, inc those that may be less maintained.  "small pieces of tissue" not official; are some trails done by explorer types

He replied:

Quote:

No, it was not an "official trail" such as Wilson, Mclehose or HK trail. On the country trail maps, it is actually referenced with black dotted line.

I usually find those trails much more interesting and I myself totally understand the potential difficulties that we can encounter hiking on those paths. I was just wondering whether those paths were actually maintained by government people or just by individuals who like the mountain like us…  I am planning on my side to go back there and try to add some additional "tissues" and I wanted to let the people in charge (if any) know but from your response, I understand that there is no such people….

I sent follow-up reply, to effect that must take extra care on such minor yet "interesting" trails

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