Giant Tree Boardwalk Introduction
After the legendary life of the Alishan Sacred Tree came to an end in June 1998 due to natural falling, it was replaced by the Alishan Xianglin Sacred Tree and the Giant Tree Boardwalks. Currently, there are two phases of the Giant Tree Boardwalks in the Alishan National Forest Recreation Area, with the Shenyih Bridge as the dividing point. The first phase of the boardwalk starts from the Thousand-Year Cyprus and is constructed using ecological methods featuring elevated wooden boardwalks and point-style concrete bases, ending at the site of the Sacred Tree. The boardwalk is 600 meters long and has three elevated wooden bridges along the way, offering views of 20 giant red cypress trees with diameters ranging from 5 to 12.1 meters and heights from 25 to 42 meters. Completed in November 1998, visitors walking along the boardwalk cannot help but marvel at the magnificent scenery of "the larger the tree, the more beautiful it is." In August 1998, to connect the giant red cypress trees around the Tree Spirit Tower, the Forestry Bureau set up a wooden fence around the Alishan Xianglin Sacred Tree and the Thousand-Year Cyprus and built a viewing platform. Together with the first phase of the Giant Tree Boardwalk, they formed a large-scale giant tree system in the recreation area. Starting in 2001, at the Shenyih Bridge near the Alishan Sacred Tree site, the Forestry Bureau opened the second phase of the Giant Tree Boardwalk, which is 418 meters long and features 16 giant red cypress trees scattered along the path. Among these, Tree No. 28 has a diameter of 4 meters at breast height and is the tallest in the Giant Tree Boardwalk, while Tree No. 2 is the oldest. Every mid-March, the Giant Tree Boardwalk blooms with Formosan rhododendrons along the way, creating a picturesque display of rhododendron flowers amongst the towering cypress forest, occasionally enveloped in mist, forming a unique floral landscape of Alishan.
