Easy Night Hike: Quarry Bay to North Point

Distance: 4/5km

Time: 1.5-2 hours

For night-hiking beginners like me, this trail is perfect. It’s leisurely with fantastic views, and plenty of early-exit points in case you want to run back to the comfort of civilization. On the other hand, there are also plenty of trails that take you deeper into the “woods”, should you like to extend your walk.

The weather is perfect nowadays for hiking, but rather than our usual routine of walking up to the peak, we decided to go for a change and take the unexplored trail through Tai Tam Country Park. The Morning Trail from Hong Kong University/Kotewall Road to the Peak (around 3km uphill) is paved all the way up and well lit, and this is what we’re used to, so we were ill-equipped for the unpaved, unlit sections of this trek. We merely relied on the flashlight powers of three iPhone5s last night, but soon enough realized they were sufficient, with enough battery to last us through for two hours.

Hiking to the Peak is definitely more of a workout than this trail, but this one has more of an in-touch-with-nature feel to it. We were able to see more stars than you can normally see from the main areas of the city, and beautiful views of the hills… well, as much of a view as you can have at night. We were determined to revisit this hike during the daytime, but night hiking definitely has its own charm – there’s a certain peace and solitude in the isolation that you rarely feel in this city.

Sometimes we would get immersed in the country park, but other times get treated to views of Hong Kong at night. At the beginning, it was the skyline of Hong Kong Island East, and then towards the end of the trail, we started to catch glimpses of IFC in central (one of our favorite Hong Kong skyscrapers – it’s actually a toss up between that and Bank of China).

If you’re interested in doing it, which I highly recommend you do, here is a marked map of the path we took:

You can actually change it up a bit to tailor it to your own goals and desired length of walk – Google Maps makes it easy for you.

Here’s a step by step guide:

1. Start at Quarry Bay MTR station, Exit A. Turn right and walk for around 5 minutes along King’s Road.
2. Turn right at the Mount Parker Road Green Trail (you’ll see a sign pointing to it). It’s paved and well-lit, going uphill.
3. After around 1.3km, you will pass a toilet. Keep going up.
4. Take a sharp right onto the Quarry Bay Jogging Trail. Fantastic views here. Level and mostly paved.
5. Turn left towards Braemar Hill.
6. End!

From there you can take a minibus down to Causeway Bay.

Actually I’m not sure if this was exactly the route we followed since we were just conjecturing our way through the trails last night with the help of Google Maps, but anyway, that’s more or less what we did and I’m sure you can figure it out yourself too… haha!

Good luck!

x