Lion Rock, Kowloon Peak, and Suicide Cliff

Hong Kong really has stellar hiking access for a major city. I started the day late (11am) but had done some research the day before. The plan was to get a solid 1000m elevation gain over a few hours before my flight to Shanghai, and hopefully hit a few peaks. Someone told me that Suicide Cliff was the hardest hike in Hong Kong—these claims are always false but my curiosity was piqued regardless. After some mapping on AllTrails I decided I would take a ten minute taxi from my hotel to Lion Peak Park, hike up to Lion Rock (of cantopop fame), follow the MacLehose trail, tag Tate’s Cairn (大老山), then ascend a ridge to Kowloon Peak (飞鹅山), the highest peak in Kowloon. Suicide Cliff (自杀崖) would be just south of the summit.

The hike up to Lions Peak was mellow and mostly uneventful. Around the peak there were two peaks, one following the trail to the left, the other on the right with a bit more “intense” terrain. I stashed my hiking pole where the scrambly bit started, chatted up a fellow Arsenal fan around the top, came down, and lo-and-behold, my pole was gone. 🥲 I hope whoever took it really needed it. My mood was still cheery though, since I was enjoying a beautiful vista of Kowloon and Hong Kong Island.

After continuing past the peak, the crowds cleared out quite a bit. I heard some rustling in the bushes, and spotted an energetic wild boar. The boar, unimpressed by me, galloped downhill before I could take a picture.

Once off the Lion Rock trail, there’s a small shop and a temple before the portion of the MacLehose trail. It was becoming evident to me that my 800 mL of water wasn’t going to be sufficient for the 25 celsius day so I bought and chugged a Pocari Sweat and a banana. The shopkeeper kindly confirmed that I was indeed heading for Kowloon Peak.

Most of the folks I ran into were tackling the full multi-day MacLehose Trail with 60 liter packs. Interestingly many of these folks were from the mainland. There were also groups of volunteers maintaining the trail (mainly local Cantonese speaking Hongkongers). Unfortunately I forgot to download my Alltrails map, so I was relying on the posted maps for directions and somehow missed the turn for Tate’s Cairn. I was too lazy to backtrack and wanted no time pressure for my flight so I continued on.

As the hike transitioned back to paved road, I ran into a few boy scouts with their printed maps and compasses. What a great experience to have as a kid. Maybe next time I’ll ditch the phone…

A rest spot indicated the start of the trail to Kowloon peak. There was more scary signage telling people to turn back that was clearly ignored.

I ran into a group of four who were shocked that I was hiking alone. One of the girls said: “you might as well turn back! This hike is clearly too easy for you!” To be honest for anyone who hikes around Vancouver, this isn’t a challenging hike at all since most of the ascent is on paved roads and dry, established trails. It was nice not to have roots and mud all over the place for a change.

The trail to Kowloon Peak carved through tall grass and up and over Elephant Peak.

The trail was pretty well-trodden so no actual bushwhacking was involved, but I would recommend not wearing shorts because of all the tree branches (also, an aside: hikers in Asia wear a lot of layers! Besides the shirtless uncles, that is).

Finally another rolling grassy hill and we were at Kowloon Peak.

The descent from Kowloon Peak to Suicide Cliff brought our first scrambly terrain of the day.

Finally, the sight of a commercial “rappelling tour” hinted that we were near the cliff.

I was tempted to join, but the quoted price was 680 HKD, and it only involved one rap down multiple times (with drone photography!) instead rapping down continuously. There were plenty of bolts in this area, and the cliff itself looked like it had some excellent cracks.

Around here I met a Swiss couple, and the terrain down started to get quite steep. Oliver and I went down to explore, and around 15 meters down we found the famous cliff. I hadn’t done any research of what it looked like before so I was happily surprised. We took turns taking photos for each other, and I tried a few scramble moves above the cliff to get a tiny bit more exposure for the day.

I decided not to hike directly down the Suicide Cliff trail and backtrack to Kowloon Peak to get more elevation in. This is when I ran out of water and started feeling my lips getting sticky. After an uneventful descent, I walked just twenty minutes to a supermarket and got a liter of yogurt to quench my thirst. I love Hong Kong.