Longxi (Dragon Whisker) Valley Greenway

The walk starts at 太湖源头, the stop the 2721 and 2725B share: sixty-five metres of provincial road, then thirty-five of greenway to the ticket office. It is the least photographed part of the day and the most consequential: the ticket and the toilets are here, and the posted price nobody publishes online governs what you pay. The 第1停车场 is 492 m back down the road, so a car means walking beside traffic before the gate rather than stepping out at it. Forty-three metres past the office the path enters 龙须峡谷 proper, the gorge the county describes as running five thousand metres west to east, and the walking begins there.

Caution: the first 65 m run beside 218省道

Photo suggestion: gate complex and gorge mouth are 140 m apart

This is the crowded half, and it is easy to see why. The path keeps tight to the stream, the pools carry signs, and the two that matter here are 云碧潭, green water under the bank, and the wall above it, 千仞崖, where the valley stops being a walk beside water and becomes a corridor between rock. The surface is maintained and the gradient is what the scenic area calls unsteep, so this is the section where families set the pace for the rest of the day. The inscribed stone 源字石 is around here too, and it marks the source story the product is built on.

Photo suggestion: the cliff reads best from the path, not from a viewing deck

醉花瀑 is 832 m along the greenway from the gate, and it is the first of the two supervised water points, not the second. This is one of the two places where the county's own 2026 account puts the harder water routes: the 勇士线 canyoning and descents, run with helmet, life vest and knee pads supplied at no extra charge and a coach attached. Supervision on a public walk is unusual, and it makes this stretch busy with families in the water season. The pool most people photograph sits 216 m further on, so the fall is where you meet the crowd rather than leave it, and past it the path starts to feel like the valley rather than the product.

Caution: wet rock and spray at the descent site

Photo suggestion: the fall is where the borrowed helmets go on

双龙潭 is 1,039 m from the gate, a deep pool under a fall and the last named water before the valley empties. From there the climb is one long even grade to 祭源坛 at 1,765 m, the last point the pedestrian network knows: beyond it the stream runs on toward 龙须山, three kilometres with a bus stop up that way on 2725B and no mapped footpath, which is the distance a brochure counts and this page will not. The elevation pass puts the shelf about 230 m above the office, and this upper stretch is the quietest ground in the area on any day.

Photo suggestion: late light reaches the altar shelf after the coaches have gone

There is no second bank, and that is a finding rather than a gap in this description. The direct line down from the altar and the chain through 双龙潭 and 醉花瀑 were stitched vertex against vertex, and their worst difference is 0.7 m over 1.8 km: the way out is the way in, and the day's arithmetic is a doubling, not a circuit. The cost is that steps and pool-side pinches are shared both ways, so one push to the altar with one long return keeps passing traffic to a single stretch. Nothing in the archived routing suggests a crossing, so any circuit promised elsewhere is a drawing, not a path.

Caution: turning back means sharing the narrow places with people coming up

Photo suggestion: the return half is the same water, walked downhill

The last kilometre falls back through 云碧潭 and the gorge mouth to the office, and it is the part to budget time for rather than energy. Waiting here: the toilets, the board with the day's price, and the shops on the visitor-centre side where the water you should have carried gets bought. Then sixty-five metres of 218省道 puts you back at 太湖源头 and the bus. Without a car, read the departure list before starting this stretch, because the walk ends when the valley closes and the day ends when the bus does. Going downhill is easy on the knees and hard on the timetable.