The road begins at the now abandoned police check point outside Xilin Village 西林村 off of country road 42 southwest of Shoufeng 壽豐 village a half hour south of Hualien city 花蓮.
From Xilin Village the concrete road switches back and forth rising away from the southern banks of the Shoufeng River 壽豐溪 climbing steadily but smoothly through unscrupulously herbicided betel nut plantations within the indigenous reserve.
At about 8.4k the plantations and other human artifacts give way to mixed broadleaf and conifer forest as the road continues to climb above 1000 m through forestry bureau administered land.
The original rail track was built in the 1920’s by the Hualien Port Timber Company 花蓮港木材株式會社. In the late 1960’s, the track was extended with a policy of replacing railway lines with truck routes for timber extraction. The road was chiefly used to extract Formosan cypress 紅檜 (hóng kuài) Chamaecyparis formosensis and Hinoki cypress 扁柏 (biǎnbo) Chamaecyparis obtuse until logging was banned in 1974.
Today the road can be navigated by car, scooter or mountain bike to 17.25 k (at about 1300 m). The road was originally built out to 55 km at great cost; at 38 k there is a memorial to workers who lost their lives in the construction. Views on our visit were obscured by overcast weather. The leachy brush was thick and wet with earth dug up along the trail by rooting boar.
