Hiking 50km in One Day

The Hong Kong Trail stretches over a marathon in length and sweeps across the entire Hong Kong Island!

We decided to wake up super early and hike the entire thing in one day :)

"If your mind is strong, all difficult things will become easy; if your mind is weak, all easy things will become difficult.."

We're on reading week (aka spring break), so I'm gonna be major spamming the blog in my freetime! Can't wait for you to read about the Hong Kong trail:)

I took this pic from Google, so it's nothing fancy, but it gives a great visual layout of Hong Kong's four major trails:

Basically, we hiked the blue trail (50km), across Hong Kong island. Hong Kong Island is where I go whenever I say I'm going to "the city." By train, it takes about an hour if I want to go to the Central part of the city. There is also the MacLehose trail (100km) that takes about 3-4 days to hike, which stretches across the New Territories of Hong Kong--that's the area that I'm at (Chinese University of Hong Kong). The Lantau trail goes on the island that has the famous Tian Tan (Big Buddha)! The Wilson trail is a vertical trail (50km) that covers New Territories and Hong Kong Island.

Now that you have a better understanding of the layout of Hong Kong, lemme share a one minute video that I made of our day!

To give some background details and thoughts, we got up around 6am for the hike. About 10 others left around 5:15am for the hike and took a taxi to the starting point. I was with Anna and Emily from UNC, and Ivan and Alex from CUHK, and we all decided it would be better to get a bit more sleep so by the time we arrived at the starting point it was about 8:15am.

The trail is divided into 8 sections, and most people don't go for the whole thing. Instead, they end up on the trail when they're hiking other trails (for example, I've actually been on the very first section at one point!)

Section 1 was honestly so easy we laughed at the beginning. We cut down the suggested time in half since it was very flat and even downhill at some points. The view was beautiful, especially since it starts at the famous Victoria's Peak! (Sound familiar? That's where I went for my very first adventure in Hong Kong!) It was pretty cloudy out and honestly I didn't take many pictures on the entire hike since I was so in the moment. But here's a pic of our view for most of the first section!

Every time we reached the next section we took a selfie and had some snacks. We never really ate a full meal until after our hike since it's mostly trail, but we were STOCKED with snacks and water hahaha. There's this Japanese store called Don Don Donkey that I bought sooo many snacks the day before. Random stuff! Like, for real, that store has everything! I got sakura flavored toothpaste (Japanese pink flowers), little pancake thingies, purple potato snacks, mochi, etc. You already know I had some almonds and fruit too🤩

The weather overall was pretty nice for each section, and I felt that overall the hike was fairly easy! I usually clock in around 25-30k steps a day in Hong Kong, so the first few hours were great. Most of the Hong Kong trail is more of a paved/greenway-vibe, and a few parts are TRAIL trails if you know what I mean (rocks, dirt, roots, etc). Of course, the more you kept walking, the more your knees and legs would be sore from the impact, but as long as you stretch and take breaks you'll be good. I don't think I could ever hike that long of a hike alone tho because I feel like I get in the zone (the ZoZone!) and never wanna take breaks. Sometimes it's like I'm swimming and don't want to come up for air😂

Section 5 was my favorite! I could totally see this part being really popular as a standalone hike. This section was definitely one of the hardest sections due to the steps and the gain in incline, and it didn't help that the sun was finally fully out at this part. I loved the gorgeous views so much that we took a break at the top to admire the city and the mountains all in one look!

We had this little game/inside joke that was soooo great. Apparently every time Anna goes on a hike she quotes Shrek by saying "donkeeeyy" in a funny Shrek voice. The dehydration or something must have been getting to us, but we made it a game that we all had to say "DONKAYYY" everytime we passed one of the trail markers. It was hilarious, especially because there are literally 100 trail markers (I swear we said DONKEY like at least 50 times). We'd be in the middle of a conversation "oh really? that's so cool---DONKAYY--yeah so as I was saying..." Or we'd be passing some other hikers and we'd say DONKAY so loud😂😂 When we passed the Wilson Trail intersection we had to say it twice because there were now TWO donkey signs to look out for hahaha.

Right before this section, we passed by a residential area with a gas station so we stocked up on water. Of course our bags were the heaviest for the hardest part😂😂 But I decided to carry a huge water instead of having it in my bag, and that was a GAME CHANGER. I took a sip like every two minutes hahaha. I also made sure to eat a clementine, candy, or handful of almonds every so often to keep my blood sugar up.

Oh yeah, we also saw this random dog who kept running ahead of us then jumping in puddles to cool off😂

One part of the trail gave us Temple Run // Great Wall of China vibes because there was a dam over the water.

There were giant koi fish in the water below, which took our breath away.

The sunset was stunning!! Saw it set over the mountains and over Stanley (I'll share a post about my day there soon!) Using the sunset as an excuse to take a break is always a fun time ("guys!! let's admire the viiiieww!")

By the time we finished the trail, it was pitch black!

Ivan lives pretty close to where we were, so he took us to a Shanghainese food place for dinner, where, you guessed it, we FEASTED🤩🤩

Lowkey at some parts of the trail we were bored (I mean come on, we're hiking this thing for over 10 hours hahaha) so Ivan and I suggested we run😂 We all ran a few times to make the flat parts go by faster, and I'm so glad!!

Overall, it was an amazing experience! The trail itself was a little underwhelming for me, but that's because I'm always on some crackhead energy levels for no reason hahaha. It makes sense that a 50km trail can't be rocky/intense the whole way, but it wasn't as challenging as I expected. The day after I took a rest day but after that I was back to my normal self!

So, what I'm hearing is, we're ready for the Lantau and the MacLehose trail!! Hoping to backpack the MacLehose at the end of our semester//after exams.

To be continued ;)

xoxo