Buffalo Hill

  • Buffalo Hill
  • 607 m
  • Primary factor 297 m
  • Location: Hong Kong
  • Location: North 22.35300, East 114.18716 (GPS on the summit)
  • Difficulty: YDS class 1
  • Climbed November 3, 2019

Information:

How to get there:
This mountain is best accessed from the long and well used MacLehose trail. Thus, one need to access this trail in an area not too far from the mountain. Look at a map and find your best access point. One possibility may be to take Shatin Pass Road up to the pass located at N22.35545, E114.19939.
We took the MTR to Ma On Shan (next to last station on this line), then a taxi up the Ma On Shan Tsuen Road all the way almost to location N22.40140, E114.24535, the road turns rough shortly before this point, so exit the taxi there.
Route description:
Starting at the location described above (end of Shan Tsuen Road), hike the nice trail uphill to the MacLehose trail at location N22.39595, E114.24892. Continue along the MacLehose trail (start out downhill), until you reach Buffalo Pass at location N22.37371, E114.23770. Locate a vague trail forking right. This trail becomes better as soon as you proceed the first few meters. Follow this trail to the summit of Buffalo Hill. There is a rock near the highest point.
From here, you have a good view across to the almost equally high West Summit. There is a nice trail connecting the two summits. The west summit has an official trigonometric pillar with a sign stating that its elevation is 606 meter. Since the map elevation of the west summit is 2 meter lower, I have assigned an elevation of 607 meter to Buffalo Hill.
There is a pretty steep and quite overgrown trail that runs from the saddle between the two summits directly back down to the MacLehose trail.
Comments:
This Sunday, Heidi suggested that we do a hike together. The choice of route became important. She does not like too much (endless) uphill and she is not too happy about steepish downhill as her knees complain under such circumstances.
I thought that going back up where I had descended from Ma On Shan, and then continue along the MacLehose trail might be a good option. We took the MTR to the station named Ma On Shan, then a taxi up the road to where the trail started. This trail climbs the final slopes to a local saddle on the main crest where it merges with the MacLehose trail.
We had a good hike and noticed that quite many people were out on the trail today. We made a brief stop at the grassy area overlooking the sea below. Many people here including a few that came to launch a para-gliding trip. Continuing along the trail, we arrived at Buffalo Pass. There, we agreed that Heidi would go ahead to the next trail fork, then wait, while I would visit this nice looking hill.
I first tried a vague trail going directly uphill towards the saddle between the two tops, but this trail seem to lead nowhere. Turning around, I went back to Buffalo Pass and ascended from there. This worked well and I was on top at 1250. The view was nice and I could see people and what looked like an official marker across at the West summit. Heading there, I arrived at 1305. The official inscription on the pillar said that this hill was 606 meter. That is 2 meter higher than my map elevation and equal to the map elevation of the first summit.
I returned down a vague path from the saddle between the two tops. This trail was indeed overgrown and pretty bad. As it turned out, I connected directly with the spot where I had turned around on my first attempt.
I caught up with Heidi and we continued the MacLehose trail all the way to the Shatin Pass Road. Here, we descended (south) along this road, then picked up the long set of stairs passing the Kwun Yum Temple while descending down to a bus station in town. Just across the very first road, we found a bus stop for route 73 serving the Festival Walk shopping mall. This is also the Kowloon MTR station, providing a 2 stop ride back to Sha Tin were we bought dinner before catching our local 23A bus back to My Fair by the Sea. Thanks to Heidi for a very nice day of hiking, our walk was about 13 kilometer.

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