Sunset Peak Hike (Lantau Island)

This is the story of how Udai and I accidentally ended up scaling Sunset Peak in Lantau Island, ranked one of the top three hardest hikes in Hong Kong. 

With an inflated feeling of accomplishment after last week's hike, I was all too willing to believe my husband when he said "I remember Sunset Peak being even easier than MacLehose Section 2..." (If you intend to use your quad muscles again after this trek, I strongly suggest considering MacLehose over this peak.)

But I took him at his word and we arrived at the Tung Chung MTR Station Sunday morning, which we quickly realized is ludicrously busy because it connects to the Big Buddha. After spending 2 hours in the process of discovering that cab drivers waved us away rather than go to Pak Kung Au (the starting point for our hike), we almost turned back to go home when we saw the lines for the buses that go there. But we figured out that since bus 11A doesn't go to the Big Buddha, it's the most efficient route to take since the fewest passengers will be in line for that.

Though we'd read the Hong Kong Tourism Board's review of the hike and also took instructions from this blog, figuring out how to minimize steepness and complete this before dark (despite its name, we wanted to be out of the wilderness before sunset to reduce the chances of further ankle twisting) was a challenge. We ended up taking the below route, partially because it was unclear how the terrain would be had we walked all the way to Mui Wo. An adventure for next time!

We were told that the hike started with a large number of stairs (after which there were flatter parts). We didn't know that "stairs" were large (but narrow) boulders stacked over each other, and last all the way up to the peak of the mountain. This is the whole hike to the top, and before we did it, 900m of elevation did not sound challenging. In actuality, since folks are coming down the same way, it's tough to keep your footing and I found it extremely physically challenging. The below photograph makes it look like a cakewalk compared to the reality.

Halfway up the mountain, I was very confused that Udai thought this hike was on par with or easier than MacLehose 2. This is when he realized, "Sorry, I think I was thinking of a different mountain when I said that..."

He's lucky that the views from almost-at-the-top were stunning, and kept my grumbling somewhat at bay.

When we arrived at the top of Sunset Peak around 2:30pm, relief came in the form of rolling grasslands we could laze through as we gathered our energy and pondered what to do about our quickly dwindling supply of water. Most visitors returned from the peak itself, which I would argue left the most beautiful part of the vista unseen. Just beyond Sunset Peak was a beautiful flat stretch full of seagrass and, in the distance, a hazy view of the Big Buddha statue.

At the juncture atop the peak, we had a tough decision to make. Should we go back down the way we came or walk a much longer but potentially flatter route to Mui Wo, and run the risk of being in the dark and without water for the last leg of our hike? 

After a heated disagreement, we chose a third route, part of the Wong Lung Hang Country Trail: a steep descent that we hoped would be slightly easier than our ascent, but shorter than the 4-5 km we'd have to traverse to get to Mui Wo. Whether it was the right choice or not is tough to say, but our next two hours featured stairs with 8 to 12 inches of steepness between them, on narrow forest paths where we at times we felt we had to balance our body weight to prevent getting blown off the hill.

Udai sauntered down ahead and called out, "Careful!" whenever he stepped onto one of these "stairs" that was loose, as I did my best not to let my opinions of these warnings, proffered forth from someone who mistakenly took me on the wrong hike, be heard under my breath.

This stretch down honestly lasted forever, and even billy goat Udai had a few choice thoughts about the nature of this last sprint of stairs. But finally, mercifully, we arrived at Wong Lung Hang picnic site in time to greet the moon peeping out from behind the Tung Chung greenery. 

We caught the 11 bus straight back to the station feeling fatigued and fulfilled from an eventful day out.