Fully Alive while Hiking "Suicide Cliff"

But first, lemme take a selfie at the famous Choi Hung Estate, which means "rainbow!"

Choi Hung was one of the first public housing districts in Hong Kong, and the whole area has beautiful colorful buildings. This is one of the most Instagrammed spots in Hong Kong! So popular, when we got to the area from the MTR, a local pointed to the top of a parking deck since he KNEW we were tourists lol. We went to the top and found a basketball court under a picturesque view!

Now, about the hike!! Suicide Cliff👀🙈

"Fear awakens us to the fact that an opportunity has arisen."

Alex and I have been wanting to hike Suicide Cliff for a while now, and we had it in our calendars for today. However, today was rainy and extremely foggy out. We figured we'd still go for it, rain or shine, but we didn't expect to not be able to see anything😂😂

Rob's birthday is today, and he had a celebration planned for 2pm, so Alex and I left at 8am for our hike in order to make it to both plans. Bright and early, yet the sun was not shining hahaha. We were basing our directions and knowledge from a random blog I found the other day. Their directions were pretty clear at first, until we started relying on advice like "take the sketchy path off of a ridge once you get to the staircase that looks like you can't climb it but you actually can." We found the right spot and worked our way up a million steps until we got to a sign that pointed us in the right direction to Jat's Incline. We were making good speed despite the slippery wet surface, and eventually we made it to what we thought was Kowloon Peak. Turns out it was just a look out and we were closer to Lion's Rock (another hike I did last month that's not where we needed to go today haha).

Our expectation of the view at one overlook:

We looked at the map at were wondering why where we needed to go was in the bottom right corner (oh wait, we went wrong somewhere. but where?) We found some hikers that were basically running down the Maclehose Trail (longest trail in Hong Kong, think Appalachian Trail vibes) and asked if they knew how to get to Suicide Cliff. They were helpful but basically said we were going in the wrong direction, so we walked up some random road called Wilson Trail and ended up back on track with the blog's directions! Score one for us!

Our reality throughout the entire hike:

The higher we got, the more the wind whipped the rain and mist in our eyes. The combination of sweat and water was rolling down my face faster than I could walk through the foliage. It's actually super cool--basically for the whole hike we were in the clouds!

The funniest part was getting to the ICONIC view of Kowloon Peak (according to the blog). Little do they know, we chose to go when it was gross out😂

Look at all the mountains we saw!!🤩😇😍 Has to be the best view of Hong Kong!

...

😂

We couldn't see more than like 10 feet in front of us 360 degrees around us, and we pulled up the blog to see where our next steps were. "Take the ridge on your right." Hmmm. We're in a fenced-off lookout area, but we squinted. OH SHOOT I THINK I SEE A TRAIL! We hopped the fence and trudged through the mud and found ourselves on a path. The right path *I hope*

I didn't take too many pictures because everything was enveloped in a layer of mist, but we literally had to crawl on our hands and knees to get over some of the rock-climbing-parts. The pictures make it look like it was just a stroll in a field, but it was cray!

Alex was so fun to go with, especially his positive attitude and our great conversations. He also shares my I-don't-wanna-turn-around-when-I'm-hiking-and-I'd-rather-walk-farther-if-it-means-I-don't-have-to-turn-around mindset. We made it to the radio tower that they mentioned in the blog, and you could hear the electricity crackling above us. It was super spooky walking underneath it.

As you can see, the fog was thick. We also passed by a helicopter pad and got to walk on it which was super cool!! Alex has the pics for those ones.

Passed by this pile of rocks too, which reminded me of the ones in Chapel Hill :')

Felt like 60% of the hike was slipping on mud/wet rocks/leaves, and 40% was finding a sketchy is-that-a-path trails, which means it was a proper adventure. At one point we came up on a barbed wire-lined cell tower, and a sign that said DANGER, CLIFF AHEAD DO NOT GO FURTHER, so of course we highfived and were like yesss we finally made it! We scaled around the fence, careful not to slip or get scratched on any wire, and saw...you guessed it, another trail-looking thing. It would've been a lot less crazy if we could see our surroundings or at least any skyscrapers below us, but we went for it anyway. A few times Alex asked if I wanted to turn back, but we both just felt like we should go for it! We both didn't have any data, but his GPS on google maps was pretty accurate the entire hike, and it showed us on the trail. A few times we wondered if we passed the Suicide Cliff part since the whole area was a huge cliff, but when we found it we KNEW we were there. We had to hop down some rocks carefully, and it was so windy that at one point I crouched down to not lose my balance. I'm so proud we stuck to finding Suicide Cliff even though we knew we wouldn't be able to see the iconic view.

I'll let you look up some pictures, or maybe even tune into my future blog posts when Alex and I "run it back" and hike during sunset on a clear day, but here's one pic from someone's blog of how iconic this hike/view can be!!

(if you don't actually read my blogs and just scroll through the pics, I'll pretend that's me on the rock hahahaha).

By the time we made it down the trail, I was covered in mud from head to toe.

My poor Brooks😭

We Ubered to the mall next to the place we were supposed to meet Rob and the others, and thank goodness I brought a cute jumpsuit to change into after washing off all the mud. After I left the bathroom, we walked to Mc Donalds to grab a late lunch (2pm on the dot, first ones there, look at us go!) Fun fact about Hong Kong: there are malls EVERYWHERE. Like every other street has one. Basically every MTR station turns into a mall. Lol. I made a quick detour to walk by a perfume store, and Alex laughed as I innocently asked "oo, can I try this one?" then barely waited for the woman to nod as I sprayed five sprays of it all over myself. Alex thought it was hilarious. My hair was still wet from the hike but when I took it down from the bun and put it in a ponytail it had a nice wave to it. Alex even popped off and brought a jacket to go with his outfit. Honestly we were looking pretty good for just having hiked like 11 miles. We met the others and played four rounds of lazar tag!!!!! SO MUCH FUN! That was my first time playing! We also sang karaoke and played some other games. Such a fun way to finish off the early hike.

Somehow I managed to rank 3rd place the first round 🔥

That luck didn't last for the other rounds, especially when we played with limited lives😂

Since you made it this far, you can sleep soundly now knowing that we didn't die on Suicide Cliff😈

xoxo