Taroko Gorge is Taiwan’s most famous canyon — and by a wide margin the most promoted. It earns the attention: the marble walls and scale are genuinely impressive. But it represents only a fraction of what the island has to offer.
In addition to the Liwu River that created Taroko, dozens of rivers cut deep through Taiwan’s mountainous core. These rivers, many of which are longer than the Liwu River, contain hundreds of creeks. The majority of these creeks feature elevation drops of over 1000 meters — their interiors are home to dozens of waterfalls and countless gorges. Taiwan’s highest waterfall — the 700-meter Jiaolong — lies nowhere near Taroko Gorge.
This article documents some of Taiwan’s most dramatic canyon descents through video — a category of terrain the island’s official tourism materials have largely overlooked.
Table of Contents
Aquatic Canyons in Taiwan
- Tiebilun Canyon | Nantou County, Ren’ai Township
- Big Dragon Canyon | Hualien County, Zhuoxi Township
Multi-day Canyons in Southern Taiwan
- Flying Dragon Canyon | Pingtung County, Wutai Township
- Shelu Creek | Pingtung County, Taiwu Township & Majia Township
- Wushan Great Canyon | Kaohsiung City, Maolin District
- Malishan Creek | Kaohsiung City, Taoyuan District
Aquatic Canyons In Taiwan
Tiebilun Canyon | Tiebilun Creek | Nantou County, Ren’ai Township
Best Day Trip (Taiwan’s Expert-level Aquatic Canyon)
Accessible from a rarely-travelled forestry road deep inside Taiwan’s Central Mountain Range, Tiebilun Creek features one of the most entertaining and technically challenging aquatic canyons in Taiwan.
Initially used by canyoning guides as a swiftwater training route, the canyon has since been developed for commercial use. However, since the numerous hydraulics become hazardous during high flow, Tiebilun Canyon is generally only run during the dry season from November to April.
Fun fact, Taiwan’s canyoning gear brand “TEBYLON” is named after this canyon.
Longest Rappel: 15 meters
Tiebilun Canyoning Video
Big Dragon Canyon | Clearwater (Qingshui) Creek | Hualien County, Zhuoxi Township
Big Dragon Canyon is notable for being located at relatively low elevation in a large watershed that experiences high flow year round. The entire canyon section is just over 800 meters long and is enclosed by 100m-200m walls.
Access to the area is controlled and permits are required to enter the watershed, due to ongoing mining operations on either side of the canyon.
Longest Rappel: unconfirmed
GPS: Big Dragon Canyon Location
Big Dragon Canyon Canyoning Video
Multi-day Canyons in Southern Taiwan
Feilong Canyon | Flying Dragon (Feilong) Creek | Pingtung County, Wutai Township
Feilong is a classic and challenging creek that is usually split into upper and lower portions, or done as a complete descent over two days. The creek ends with a rappel down the two-drop Flying Dragon Waterfall as the creek pours into Ailiao North River.
During the spring, summer, and fall, the watershed is prone to hard-to-predict torrential downpours which can cause extreme flash flooding.
In 2023, as a team of 10 experienced canyoneers were navigating a multi-pitch rappel sequence in the upper canyon, an unforecasted localised thunderstorm delivered 15 centimetres of rain to the watershed over a 2-hour period. The flash flood that followed caused Taiwan’s deadliest canyoning accident to date.
Longest Rappel: unconfirmed
Upper and Lower Section (High Flow) Canyoning Video
3-Day Descent from Headwaters Canyoning Video
Shelu (Caljisi) Creek｜Pingtung County, Taiwu Township & Majia Township
Shelu Creek flows down from the northwest face of Beidawu Mountain in Southern Taiwan. The mountain is considered sacred in Paiwan culture and many of the iconic waterfalls and canyons in the creek are known by their original Paiwan place names.
As it flows down from the eroded slopes of Beidawu, the creek drops steeply before joining Ailiao South Creek. This middle section of the creek contains multiple large drops and deep pools, including Tjakuljavas Waterfall (also known as Saljavan Waterfall) and Tjaniliga Canyon (meaning “like a centipede” in Paiwan).
Tjaniliga Canyon is commonly known as Alpaca Canyon.
Longest Rappel: 125m
GPS: Tjakuljavas Waterfall Location (Shelu Creek)
Shelu (Caljisi) Creek Canyoning Video
Wushan Great Canyon | Hot Spring (Wenquan) Creek | Kaohsiung City, Maolin District
Located in the tropical and sparsely populated Maolin District of Kaohsiung, Wushan Great Canyon doesn’t disappoint. The route contains multiple rappels over 50 meters and the largest drop is a 145-meter-tall multi-pitch descent into a massive cavern filled with talus.
Due to the length of the approach, which begins with a 20-kilometer slog up an unmaintained logging road out of the Rukai village of Adiri, this epic canyoning route requires at least 2 days.
A tributary of Hot Spring Creek, Emerald Canyon, is an easier canyoning route that can be run as a day trip from Kaohsiung.
Longest Rappel: 150m
GPS: Wushan Great Canyon Location
Wushan Great Canyon Canyoning Video
Malishan Creek | Kaohsiung City, Taoyuan District
Malishan Creek is the longest canyoning route that has been documented on film in Taiwan. While this doesn’t represent the longest canyoning expedition in Taiwan, it’s likely the only canyoning descent in the world to have been professionally filmed by the canyoning team itself and released as a feature-length adventure documentary.
Longest Rappel: unconfirmed
Malishan (2017)
This thrilling documentary captures the first descent of Malishan Creek by a team of international canyoneers as part of the Taiwan Canyoning Expedition. The Taiwan Canyoning Expedition brought professional canyoneers from across the world to Taiwan to explore and develop Taiwan’s canyoning potential.
The Malishan expedition lasted 8 days from approach to exit and suffered from adverse weather conditions. For more information, head to Sidetracked.com for a full write-up of the descent.
Rent the whole movie on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/malishan