Datun Mountain is Taipei’s signature peak. You can see it from the city, it stands 1,092 m above sea level, it sits inside Yangmingshan National Park, and an MRT ride plus a bus puts you at the trailhead in a little over an hour. No permit needed.
But treating Datun as a stroll on the edge of town is a mistake. The mountain has three summits — Main Peak at 1,092 m, West Peak at 985 m, South Peak at 959 m — and linking all three means 1.9 km of raw, muddy, slippery trail where you haul yourself up on fixed ropes. It is the hardest ground on any mountain inside Taipei, and it is barely an hour from Taipei Main Station.
What Datun Mountain Is: One Volcano, Three Summits
Datun is a volcano. The Main, South and West peaks were once a single mountain that eruptions broke into three. All that up-and-down between them is, in effect, a walk across what is left of the cone.
The Main Peak reaches 1,092 m — only 30 m lower than Qixing Mountain (Seven Star Mountain), the high point of Yangmingshan — yet Datun is the most popular mountain in the whole of Yangmingshan. A Civil Aeronautics Administration navigation aid station occupies the summit, and the second-class triangulation point sits inside its fenced grounds, closed to the public.
Visitors usually ask the same question: how does a mountain barely over 1,000 m have views like this? The answer is wind. The Datun area takes the northeast monsoon for seven months of the year, and that wind holds plant succession almost at a standstill. On Main Peak, South Peak, West Peak, Miantian Mountain and Xiangtian Mountain, everything above the mid-slopes is open silvergrass; trees only take hold further down. So at 1,000 m you get the kind of open ground you would normally have to climb to 3,000 m to find.
Three Ways to Do It — You Choose the Difficulty
The same mountain can be a fully stepped tourist walk or a raw trail where you need your hands. It depends entirely on where you start.
| Option | Distance / time | Route | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main Peak only | 3.2 km return 200 m ascent about 2 hours | Out and back from Anbu Trailhead, well-built steps the whole way | General visitors, average fitness |
| Three-summit traverse | about 5.8 km about 4–5 hours | Miantianping → West Peak → South Peak → Datunping → Main Peak, including the rope section | People who hike regularly |
| Full loop | about 12 km about 7–8 hours | Erziping → three summits → Anbu → Zhuzihu → Xiaoyoukeng | Anyone with a full day |
That third option is also Section 2 of the Taipei Grand Trail, a 92 km circuit in eight sections that the city government stitched together from the trails ringing Taipei. Section 2 is widely reckoned the hardest of the eight — and almost all of that difficulty is packed into the 1.9 km between Datun’s West and South peaks.
This account follows the third option: start at Erziping, cross all three summits, then walk out through Zhuzihu to Xiaoyoukeng.
Difficulty: One Mountain, Two Completely Different Trails
What people get wrong about Datun is that the difficulty is not evenly spread. Datunping splits the route into two trails with almost nothing in common.
The West and South Peak section (Miantianping → West Peak → South Peak → Datunping, 1.9 km): raw, steep, muddy, slippery, with fixed ropes needed throughout. West and South peaks are actually more than 100 m lower than the Main Peak, but the climbing is compressed into a short distance, so the gradient is steeper. The profile is an M — up three times, down three times.
The Main Peak section (Datunping → Main Peak, or Anbu Trailhead → Main Peak): well-maintained stepped trail. Higher, but it only tests your legs. Nothing technical.
Some calibration for anyone who has not hiked Taiwan’s low mountains: the “ropes” here are fixed lines along the trail, there to help you pull up and lower down steep ground. This is not climbing, and there is no exposure or drop-off. It sits roughly at a grade 1 scramble in the Lake District or Scotland, and it is far gentler than the chained sections in Japan’s Northern Alps. The real problem is not technique. It is mud.
Weather is the one variable that matters. This stretch is notorious for being slick, and after rain it is genuinely treacherous. The day we went was cold but cloudless, with no rain for two or three days beforehand, and the legendary mud never materialised. If it has rained recently, reassess — or switch to the Main Peak on its own.
Can Kids Do It?
My son hikes regularly, and he handled it. The steps and drops are big for a child and he needed his hands, but there is no dangerous ground. If your kids already have trail experience, this is a good step up. If they have only walked paved paths, start them on the Main Peak section instead.
Getting There: Three Things That Will Shape Your Day
Both trailheads — Erziping Visitor Center and Xiaoyoukeng Visitor Center — sit up on Yangmingshan, and both are reached the same way: MRT to Jiantan Station, bus up to Yangmingshan, then transfer to Bus 108, the park shuttle loop.
1. Bus 108 runs one way only. You can ride from Erziping to Xiaoyoukeng, but not back the other way. This decides which direction you walk.
2. Yangde Boulevard is restricted on weekends and holidays — ordinary private cars are not allowed up. Check before you drive.
3. Start at Erziping. Get the three summits done while you are fresh, then finish downhill through Zhuzihu. Do it in reverse and you will spend the pretty farmland section thinking about what is still ahead of you.
If you drive, park at Erziping and end the walk at the Balaka Highway Entrance stop (百拉卡公路口) on Yangjin Highway rather than carrying on to Xiaoyoukeng. You lose the last short stretch, but Bus 108 runs from there back to Erziping and your car. Park at Xiaoyoukeng instead and you are committed to walking the loop backwards — Zhuzihu first, the three summits second — which saves the hardest ground for the second half of the day.
That stop is worth knowing even without a car. On weekend afternoons the buses are full from Erziping onward and you will stand the whole way down; board at Balaka Highway Entrance, before that, and you get a seat.
No mountain permit, no application, and mobile signal the whole way.
Erziping Trail: Three Kilometres of Warm-Up
From Erziping Visitor Center, the first 3 km follow the Erziping Trail to Miantianping Pavilion. It is flat, fully paved and barrier-free — wheelchairs and pushchairs can use it. Pleasant enough, but its job is simply to deliver you to the foot of the mountain.
Miantianping Pavilion sits at a T-junction: Erziping one way, Qingtian Temple another, Datun West Peak the third. Turn toward West Peak and the trail reverts to its natural state immediately — the paving stops and the ground turns rough. The change is abrupt and unmistakable.
West and South Peaks: The Real Section
It is only 1.9 km from Miantianping to Datunping. It took us about two hours, and we stopped to eat at the pavilion near Datunping.
Datun West Peak, 985 m. To the west lie Miantian Mountain and Xiangtian Mountain; to the southwest, the mouth of the Tamsui River, Taipei Port and Taiwan’s west coast; to the east, South Peak and the Main Peak. The three summits sit close together and all have good views, but from completely different angles.
That day was the last Sunday of 2022, and Taipei finally had sun. It was around 5°C up there, but everyone had clearly had the same idea — West Peak was packed.
Datun South Peak, 959 m, is the lowest of the three. The 600 m between West and South peaks is the steepest up-and-down of the whole day. From the top of South Peak the entire Taipei Basin lies open in front of you.
Datun Main Peak: One of the Best Viewpoints in Taipei
Past Datunping the trail turns civilised. There is still a steep climb to the Main Peak, but it is all well-built steps — you simply walk up stairs.
Datun Main Peak is 1,092 m, broad and rounded. The navigation aid station takes the north side of the summit, with a viewing platform beside it. Apart from the north, blocked by the station, the views are open on every side: sunset over the Tamsui River and the north coast to the west, sunrise over Xiaoyoukeng and Qixing Mountain to the east, and the lit-up sprawl of Taipei to the south.
This used to be where Taipei drove up for night views. I studied in Tamsui, and riding up Datun at night was part of those years — whenever fog rolled into Tamsui we wanted to push up through the cloud. The most extraordinary version of this mountain I have seen was a foggy night between March and May, cloud drifting below our feet, the city lights refracting through it like glass.
Since 10 August 2020, the Datun summit road has been closed to cars and motorcycles around the clock (official and emergency vehicles excepted). The only way up now is on foot from Anbu Trailhead: 1.6 km, 200 m of ascent, about an hour. Harder work for photographers — but the summit is quieter for it.
The Main Peak trail follows a firebreak cut during the Japanese colonial period, running through dwarf bamboo and silvergrass. It is a lovely piece of walking. People come up for the butterflies from May to July, and for the silvergrass in autumn.
Zhuzihu: A Different Taipei on the Way Down
Once you drop from the Main Peak to Anbu Trailhead, the hard part is behind you. What follows is mostly downhill or flat, all of it well maintained. You start passing people who are not here to climb anything, and the mood of the trail loosens.
From Balaka Highway we picked up the Shuiwei-Balaka Trail down into Zhuzihu, then the Dinghu Calla Lily Trail and the Yangming Creek Trail, crossing the valley to Xiaoyoukeng.
Zhuzihu (Bamboo Lake) is a flat basin ringed by Datun, Qixing and Xiaoguanyin mountains. It was once the seed paddy for Ponlai rice; today it grows calla lilies and other high-value flowers, and the local economy has shifted from rice and horticulture to restaurants and tourism. In calla lily season it draws more visitors than anywhere in Yangmingshan except Yangming Park.
In the late sun: small bridges, running water, wide flower fields, farmhouses, and Xiaoyoukeng steaming in the distance. Walking into this straight out of the morning’s fight is a strange contrast. There is nothing else quite like it inside Taipei — a farming village in the mountains.
Why I’d Walk It This Way
Hikers — me included — sometimes get so fixed on getting over the mountain in front of us that we forget hiking is mostly meant to be enjoyed.
The reason the Datun peaks are worth your day is not only that this is Taipei’s signature mountain, nor even the 1.9 km of mud and rope. It is that in a single day you can go from a raw trail that needs your hands to a valley of calla lily fields and small bridges, without ever leaving Taipei and without applying for anything.
Respect the mountain, fear the mountain, then prepare properly before you go to it. That is what I keep telling my son. Walking the Datun peaks is not conquest — it is finding out what a place actually holds.
