Beitou Thermal Valley
A steaming green hot-spring lake; the loop takes 15 minutes
A fuller guide to this place, built from 6 sources, is written in Traditional Chinese.
Being there
Walk the path round the pool; the steam is thickest in the morning. Closed Mondays.
The story
The water is close to boiling and steams all year; the Japanese called it Hell Valley. It is a heat source left by the Datun volcanoes, and every spring in Beitou is connected to it. In 1905 a Japanese scholar found a faintly radioactive mineral in a nearby stream. Named hokutolite, it is the only mineral in the world named after a place in Taiwan.
