Syue Shan (Snow Mountain)

This rendition is Ben's version of hiking to the top of Taiwan's second highest mountain. Together, the 3 of us walked up to 3200 m. to Cabin 369, Shonliujiu. Ben got up early and completed the hike to the summit at 3880 in 3.7 km to witness the sunrise and this is his arrogant account of his early morning trek in his own words.

"At 2 AM, I awoke and gathered my meagre belongings and a small ration of food, water and courage. Accompanying me was my trustee Merlin, a walking stick carved from my own hand. We embarked under the canopy of stars. True terror is its own foreshadowing.

The first portion of the journey covered a snake infested slope of bamboo which gave way to an enchanted forest known to the Chinese roughly as 'The Black Forest of Imagination'.

I could see nothing but the sky above and a 1 meter diameter of light emitted from my headlamp torch. I was not completely alone, but I was the only human making the journey that night.

To say I was terrified would be to oversimplify things. At first, I thought 'God, I'm still afraid of the dark', but the reality is that it's not the dark I fear, but my imagination in the dark. On this night, my imagination reached its full potential.

I started to hear sounds from the beginning. I knew turning back would offer no relief, so there was nothing to do but press forward. Alternating between voids of dark silence were the echoes of unnamed alpine creatures punctuating the deafening wind and blinding fog. The wind would rise from silence to a roaring howl, the sound you hear before your death, like the keening of a banshee, yet I amazed myself that I was still alive.

Then I became preoccupied with trying to find my way, because I lost the path. The terrain would have been challenging for an average hiker, but fate and good genes had endowed me with a keen sense of direction and dexterious feet. That's fortunate because I'd been running since the beginning.

The sounds continued, more taunting than haunting. They were ethereal, otherworldly creatures, surrounding me and moving in.

I was making a good pace but fear was an oversimplification. I'd like to compare it to the analogy of Dr. Frankenstein chasing his monster across the icefields, but I don't know if I was the doctor or the monster.

I broke out into a field of fog and flowers which gave me a burst of adrenaline. Then I reached the summit and the mountain treated me to the most spectacular natural phenomenon allowable for the fog gave way to a magnificent cascade of kaleidoscopeing rocks and Latin dancing clouds lit by benevolent Solaris.

The descent was irrelevant. I descended a different mountain. The ascent was of the mind; the descent was of the mountain."