Yinhe Cave Taipei: The Hidden Waterfall Temple Hike Near Maokong (My Experience)
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Is Yinhe Cave worth visiting? In my opinion, yes, it was one of my favourite things I did in Taiwan! Yinhe Cave is a temple set in a cave, half way up what feels like the cliff face, in the middle of a mountain forest, with a waterfall coming down in front of it. In terms of temples, it is pretty small, and the inside isn’t exactly ‘impressive’, but the location and the hike to reach it makes up for it!
In This Guide
How to Get to Yinhe Cave from Taipei
There are 2 main ways to get to Yinhe Cave:
Option 1: Maokong Gondola + Hiking Trail (my route)
I combined Yinhe Cave with a ride on the Maokong Gondola. I was staying in central Taipei, so took the MRT to the Taipei Zoo, the bottom gondola station is just a short walk away and then rode the gondola to the top.
From the top station there are a couple of different hiking trails. Depending on the trail, it’s around a 2.5mile hike and takes approximately 1 hour to 1 hour 30 one way. It is rated moderate, so expect it to be a bit of a workout!
Option 2: MRT & Bus
I didn’t go this way, so I can’t speak for its reliability, but an alternate option is to take the bus. From Xindian MRT, bus GR12 leaves from Bitan and takes 10 minutes to Yinhedong. From here, the trailhead is a 15 minute walk along the road, then it’s a short hike up some stairs to the waterfall and cave.
This would be the easiest option for those that didn’t want to do a long hike.
Jump here to the section about Yinhe Cave if you wanted to skip the hiking route information.
Option 3: Maokong Gondola + Hike + Bus (circular route)
A 3rd option would be to combine the two. I would recommend starting from the gondola, doing the 1 hour hike to Yinhe Cave and then getting the bus back to Taipei from Yinhedong. Doing the route in this direction means it’s ‘mostly’ downhill, and then you don’t have another 1 hour hike to get back to the gondola.
My Yinhe Cave Hiking Experience
Taking the Maokong Gondola to Start the Hike
I knew I wanted to ride on the Maokong Gondola but there’s not a huge amount to do once you’re at the top. There are a few places to eat, a tea museum (that is closed on Mondays) and a couple of different hiking trails.
In my mind it made sense to do both at the same time and turn it into a proper day trip, rather than just a cable car ride! I took the first cable car up at 9am.
It was a little cloudy on the day of my visit, but when riding in the gondola you could still see snippets of the city and the tea plantations below. I had a cable car capsule to myself, so it was a very peaceful journey to the top.
There are a couple of stations on the way up, but I just stayed on until I got to Maokong.
Following the Woodland Trail from Maokong to Yinhe Cave
How Difficult Is the Yinhe Cave Hike?
- 🕘Distance/time: 2.5 miles/1 hour one way (5 mile round trip/approximately 2hr30 with temple stop)
- 🥾Difficulty: Moderate – Stairs (27% according to AllTrails), slopes, forest tracks
- ☔️Rain difficulty: muddy and surface becomes slippery
I loved the variation of the trail through the mountains, there seemed to be a little bit of everything along the route. From tea plantations, woodland paths, scenic trails, steps, a river and then of course the waterfall and temple at the end.
Usually the Maokong Gondola is closed on a Monday, but it is open on a Monday once a month. This was the day I chose to do it. The trail was mostly quite quiet around 9.30am, but on the return journey I saw a lot more people.
Signage was a little hit and miss. The trail I wanted to take was marked on the map, so it is a legit trail. Every now and then there were signs pointing to ‘Yinhe Cave Waterfall‘ or ‘Maokong’ when doing the reverse, but they weren’t always obvious.
Going from Maokong in the direction of Yinhe Cave, the majority of the route was downhill, there were only a couple of sections that were uphill. So this made the route feel a little easier. (Doing the route in reverse was HARD).
Google Maps/AllTrails
I relied on a mix of Google Maps and the AllTrails app. I only use the free version of All Trails and could roughly compare the route to the satellite version on Google.
On AllTrails there are 2 trails from Maokong to Yinhe Cave: The Yinhe Cave Waterfall Trail is a shorter trail, has a higher elevation gain (as I believe it also goes up one of the peaks), or I was following the Silver Stream Waterfall trail. This trail is longer, but has an elevation gain of 180m, rather than 316m.
You could follow a route from Maokong to Yinhe Cave by completely using Google Maps and the walking navigation directions, but for the most part it follows the main road. I specifically wanted to take the forest route, so I followed it to find the start of the trail and when the trail hit a fork, I knew I wanted to turn left, where Google follows the route to the right towards the road.
What Shoes Should You Wear for Yinhe Cave?
I visited on a rainy day and wore my Teva sandals. I got a few funny looks from people wearing proper hiking boots, but I find wearing hiking sandals much more comfortable and in the end I was glad that I chose to wear them over shoes.
When it rains, the trail does get very wet, muddy and slippery. My Tevas were COVERED in mud and were completely soaked (so were my feet). But they worked in my favour. When I got back to my hotel, I cleaned them off in the shower (along with myself!), left them to dry overnight, and by the next day they were good to go again. I could never have done this with shoes or boots, they would have taken DAYS to dry.
Teva do have different versions of hiking sandals, and in hindsight, I probably should invest in the ones with a grippier sole (but I love the basic version!). The tiles along the route get slippery in the rain, so I just had to make sure I took care on these parts.
I ended up on a slightly different route on the way back to the cable car station with a near vertical hill and the Tevas just weren’t up to it. I debated between taking them off and just walking barefoot, or crouching down and pretty much just sliding down on my bottom instead. It was all part of the adventure though!
Visiting Yinhe Cave Temple and Waterfall
Altogether it took me around 50 minutes to walk from the Maokong Gondola to Yinhe Cave!
I was SO glad the temple was open, it really made the experience for me. I arrived at just the right time and had it all to myself for around 10 minutes, before a large group came up from the road route and another group that was behind me on the trail caught up.
In the end it worked out in my favour, because a lovely woman offered to take a photo of me as I was travelling on my own!
As mentioned, the temple inside is very basic and quite empty. It kind of added to the atmosphere though, like it was being swallowed up by the forest. There is still a couple of small tables with some offerings, but the location and the views make up for it.
With the temple being open, you have access to the little balconies which are a popular photo spot, and the trail continues out the other side of the temple where you can then walk behind the waterfall and up to the cave (a dead end).
Yinhe Cave Opening Hours: Is the Temple Always Open?
I visited on a Monday in November (around 10.30am) and the temple was open, but opening hours can be difficult to confirm online. If I remember correctly, there was a sign on the door, and in theory it should have been shut the day of my visit, but it wasn’t (but it could have been an old sign?).
From reading reviews, some people had said it was only open on weekends and holidays, others seemed to say it was open every day. I took a chance, hoping that it would be open. I’d recommend allowing flexibility in your plans though. If it was shut the day of my visit, I was tempted to visit again on the Saturday but using the bus rather than redoing the hike.
The Return Journey: Don’t Make My Mistake
Because the route through the forest was quite muddy and slippery, I decided to go back to the Maokong Gondola station via the main road instead (the Google Maps way). I followed the trail from the waterfall, along the river and back to the road. This is the way you’d follow in reverse if using the bus, instead of the hiking trail (it is all steps back to the road).
In the end I’m not sure if this was the smartest choice. I knew most of the forest route was down steps, so in reverse I’d then have to go UP all the steps. The road route, being a road, is just a steep incline, rather than steps. It was horrendous though, it was just a constant uphill climb that seemed to not level out for ages. I was SWEATING by the time I was even a fraction of the way up!
Eventually it came to a point where I recognised a section when the forest route overlapped with the road route, so decided to then take the rest of the trail through the forest as I knew that part was quite flat.
The only problem is, doing it in reverse, it looked a little bit different, and I missed the junction where I should have turned off as it wasn’t very obvious! I noticed it looked a little different and I passed something that I didn’t remember seeing before, and when checking Google Maps, I noticed what I had done, and then had to double back. This added about 20 minutes onto my hike.
It wasn’t the end of the world though, and I think if I had kept following it, I would have just ended up further along on the main road, rather than continuing along the scenic route. It took me around 1 hour 10 to get back to the gondola, compared to the 50 minutes on the way to Yinhe Cave.
If I had the directions on constantly, rather than just glancing at the maps every now and then, this wouldn’t have happened either!
The second error I then made, was what I mentioned above, regarding the near vertical, wet, slippery, slope! When you get closer to Maokong, there are a couple of cut-throughs back to the village. Again I followed a sign that said ‘Maokong’, but in theory I should have gone one more along to take my original route that wasn’t quite so steep! It may have been fine on a dry day, but in the rain, I should have given up!
Combining Yinhe Cave With Maokong and Taipei Zoo
Once I got back to the top cable car station, I went into one of the cafes to try a tea cream. When I was walking back up the steep slopes, the ice cream was all I could think about, it was definitely my reward for completing the hike!
There are also clean, public toilets at the Maokong Gondola Station. I made sure to go when I started the hike and then again once I finished. (I believe reviews said there are toilets close to the trailhead at Yinhe Cave, but they aren’t always open).
I started heading back down the gondola around 12.30pm.
I had bought my gondola ticket combined with the Taipei Zoo entrance*. Rather than going all the way back to the bottom, I got off at the ‘top’ zoo station and rode the land train shuttle to the second entrance. I then ended up spending around 3 hours at the zoo! It was a lot bigger than I was expecting!
My day did involve a LOT of walking, I think I ended up doing close to 30,000 steps once I had also gone to the night market for dinner too!
Yinhe Cave Tips Before You Go
- Wear shoes with grip
- Expect mud after rain
- Download offline maps
- Don’t rely only on signs
- Allow at least half a day
- Check weather before going
- Take plenty of water
- Make sure to use the toilet before and after the hike as you may not find any on the route!
About the Author – Kylie
My travels have taken me to over 50 countries worldwide (& I lived in USA for 4yrs). I hold a BTEC National Diploma in Travel & Tourism (triple distinction) and have been writing on Between England & Everywhere since 2015.
Expert in: Adventure travel🎢, beach destinations🏖️, and packing light (mid-budget backpacker)🎒