This hike through parts of Ma On Shan Country Park starts at Shui Long Wo and ends up in Sai Kung, but you can go down the other side to Shatin or keep going right through to Lion Rock, although that’d be for the very fittest. Today we parked beside the Sai Sha Road Barbeque Area (which can be found on Google maps), it’s free so you have to get a bit lucky to get a parl. There’s also the Kei Ling Ha Lo Wai Car Park about 250m in the Ma On Shan direction but that’s also free and seems to have a lot of cars parked there who belong to people living in the villages.
Anyway, we walked across to road to this place here where one of the trail sections begin. Basically the plan was to hike up the Hunch Backs and along the ridges of Ma On Shan Country Park and down to Shatin or Sai Kung. We’ve done the Hunch Backs hike before starting at Ma On Shan and that is absolutely brutal in the summer, straight up and probably one of the hardest hikes I’ve done in Hong Kong. Don’t recommend that one unless you are super, super fit. Anyway, the path is basically Maclehose Trail Section 4, and for the first few km’s is basically a nice easy incline.
After that it gets a bit steeper, nothing too bad, probably because it was 20-25 degrees. It’s probably only 30 minutes of reasonably tough going, doable even if you’re not in the best of shape. You’ll reach a bit of an intersection where you can either decide to hike up to the top of the Hunch Backs or walk along some gently sloping hills. We went up the top. There’s signs saying “Extreme Danger, Fatal Injuries Have Happened Here” or something along those lines. Ignore them, unless you are being an absolute idiot, I can’t see how you would do yourself any harm here.
The views all over Sai Kung, over Ma On Shan and Tai Po would be excellent, except today was a pretty typical Hong Kong Day with high pollution, shit visibility and basically just grey and crap. If you could do this on a clear day (you’d have to be extremely lucky as there’s about 1 of those per year) it’d be awesome. A lot of people hike up here as it’s quite easy going for most of the way and I can imagine it be jam packed with Under Armour wearing and hiking pole toting hiking wannabe’s in the weekend.
Once you get to the top turn around and go back down and head towards Sai Kung. There’s a number of different tracks you can take so just take your pick, you can’t get too lost. We ended up at the eastern end of Sai Kung then ran back to the car about 6km’s along the road, through Sai Kung. Overall not a very difficult hike but a much more enjoyable way to get to the top of the Hunch Backs.
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