Wednesday, 3 June 2015

HK-341982 Tai Mo Shan (大帽山)

Tai Mo Shan (大帽山) is the highest peak in Hong Kong, with an elevation of 957 m. It is located at approximately the geographical centre of the New Territories.

The Tai Mo Shan Country Park covers an area of 14.40 km² around Tai Mo Shan. It is located to the north of Tai Lam Country Park. It is noted to have the 35-metre Long Falls, the highest waterfall in Hong Kong.

As a former volcano, that has long been extinct, Tai Mo Shan is composed of volcanic rocks from the Jurassic age. Today a small hill that is part of Tai Mo Shan, known as "Kwun Yum Shan", still vents warm air though cracks in the rocks that lead all the way to the mantle. The holes that exhale warm air are known as "hot pots". When the surface temperature is cold, and the warmth of the expelled air is clearly discernible, this phenomenon is referred to by locals as "dragon's breath". If the air temperature at the summit is 6 degrees Celsius, then the air emerging from the interior of Kwun Yum Shan is somewhere between 13 and 21 degrees Celsius. These "hot pots" are now just mild remnants of the intense superheated steam vents of the volcanic past. The volcanic rocks are mainly coarse ash crystal tuff.

In the past, Tai Mo Shan was famous for a type of green tea, called mist or cloud tea, which grew wild on the mountain side. Occasionally, local people can still be seen picking the tea shoots for brewing green tea.

Source: Wikipedia

This postcard came from Augustus (3 June 2015) Postcrossing.

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