We take a bus from Xindian 新店 to Suao 蘇澳 where we rent scooters to ride to the trail head above Wuta 武塔 in Nanao Township 南澳鄕 in southernmost Yilan County 宜蘭縣.
The recently opened official section of the Nanao trail 南澳古道 continues beyond the end of 宜57 in Ilan county, after driving through the villages of 金洋村 and 仲岳岳. Nanao trail 南澳古道 is also known as 比亞毫古道 and 舊武塔古道. The trail connected numerous Atayal villages that previously flourished in the Nanao mountains, including 比亞毫 and 武塔 Butuseysya. The officially reopened part of the trail is only the first 3.8 k.
The stream starts in a broad but steep drainage but quickly narrows to a canyon of cascading waterfalls feeding a sequence of beautiful pools. The rain picks up as we make our way upstream. We only see one other group, a young couple at the first large pool.
We turn around at a beautiful waterfall that we do not immediately see how to climb, realizing that if we turn around, we should be able to get back to our scooters just before dark.
Back at the trail and confluence with Nanao south stream 南澳南渓, we don't go down the trail but continue down the stream to the river, discovering a big waterfall and getting into the river to swim down thinking that we will get back to our scooters faster than the long walk out on the trail. Engorged with rain, the river is fast but challenging to navigate. We get to a set of rapids that we do not want to negotiate in the failing light and discover that the river is diverging far from the trail and we do not see any way up to the trail, so we begin a difficult trace upstream in the dark back to the confluence and trail. We are not back to Nanao on our scooters until almost midnight. We can't find any accommodations in the village so pitch camp at Nanao Farms and are surprised to discover a caretaker coming to our tent to collect a camping fee at 1 AM.
