Into Hualien's Backcountry with OakMega: River Trekking, Jade Hunting, and Reconnecting with the Land

Every quarter, team building brings us back to the same question: what kind of experience lets a group of people who stare at screens all day truly connect with each other?

For Q2 2026, the answer was a river.

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Into Baibao Creek | What the Backcountry Hides

Baibao Creek in Shoufeng, Hualien, is one of the original sources of Taiwan's Fengtian jade. Deep turquoise pools, sheer cliffs pressing in from both banks, veins of jade buried in the gravel of the creek bed: calling it a place of both adventure and surprise is no exaggeration.

On a bright, sunny morning, the entire OakMega team gathered at the water's edge. Some had never been river trekking before; others had been itching to go for ages. With varying degrees of anticipation, everyone pulled on wetsuits and canyoning shoes, ready to head upstream.

The moment we geared up, a strange calm set in. Phones went into dry bags, the signal slowly faded, and all that was left was the sound of the water, our guide's instructions, and our teammates' laughter, punctuated by the occasional shriek.

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Local Guides | Houshan Liren, Helping People Truly "See" Hualien

Leading us up the creek was Houshan Liren, a local outdoor studio in Hualien, along with our lead guide for the day, Tsai Hsien.

Houshan Liren is a team of young guides who have spent more than ten years in Hualien. They fell in love with the land and stayed, and today they share that love, with real expertise, with everyone who steps into the canyon. Their job isn't just to get you safely through a river; it's to help you truly "see" Hualien, not just pass through it.

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Special Guest | Taiwan Rock Guy, Telling Taiwan's Story to the World

We had one more special companion on this trip: Jimmy, an American geologist better known online as "Taiwan Rock Guy."

Jimmy currently works at the Eastern Taiwan Earthquake Research Center at National Dong Hwa University, and he's also a bilingual science creator with well over 100,000 followers. A fluent Mandarin speaker, he uses video to share Taiwan's geological wonders with the world.

Baibao Creek is where Taiwan's Fengtian jade comes from, and with Jimmy there to explain it all, the rocks we'd been walking over instantly became an outdoor geology class. Teammates took turns holding up stones from the creek bed for him to identify one by one, and the gasps of excitement never seemed to stop.

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On River Trekking | What the Office Can't Replicate

River trekking means reading the terrain, judging the current, and sometimes reaching out a hand to pull a teammate up.

These interactions happen naturally in a canyon, and they're hard to engineer in any office activity. No agenda, no slide deck, no OKRs to hit, and yet, in a way, it helps people remember each other better than plenty of formal alignment sessions do.

On the way back along the forest trail, we held on to each other so no one would slip, swapping stories from the trek, and the laughter never let up. Moments like these are exactly what we hope to hold on to every time we do team building.

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The Warmth of the Backcountry | You Only Know What It Holds When You Step In

Taiwan's beauty has never been short on stories. What's often missing is the chance to actually step inside them.

Houshan Liren chose to put down roots in Hualien so more people could experience this land. Jimmy chose to use his camera and his words to tell Taiwan's story to the world. And OakMega chooses, every quarter, to take the whole team into some corner of Taiwan and create a shared memory together with the people who live there.

From Baibao Creek, we brought home more than soaked clothes and a few pieces of jade from the river. We brought home a story that belongs only to us.

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If OakMega's way of working and team culture sound like your kind of thing, we're looking for people to join us on the road to wherever we go next.

👉 See our open positions