Sha Tin Pass sits at the border of two administrative districts: Sha Tin District to the north, inside the mountain, and Wong Tai Sin District to the south, at the foothill. The line between them runs through the pass itself, marked today by Tsz Chuk Pavilion. The hills on either side — Temple Hill and Unicorn Ridge — are part of Lion Rock Country Park, which presses in close on the Kowloon side. The pass is also known as Sha Tin Au, the Cantonese word for a mountain gap. Its position north of the densely built residential district of Tsz Wan Shan places it at the edge of Hong Kong's urban mass, a point where the city abruptly ends and the country park begins.

The British Army constructed Shatin Pass Road in the 19th century, improving what had been a footpath into something more passable. But the road reached the pass and some villages beyond it without extending all the way to the town of Sha Tin itself — which meant the trade flow that the 1904 survey recorded was still largely on foot. Those fish carriers from Tolo Harbour represent a now-vanished economy of human porterage that once connected Hong Kong's fishing waters with its urban markets by the most direct route available: up and over the hills. When roads and eventually the railway changed the geography of movement, the pass's commercial function disappeared, leaving behind its physical form and a set of trails.

Today Sha Tin Pass is most visited as a hiking destination — specifically as the point where two of Hong Kong's great long-distance trails diverge. Stage 4 of the Wilson Trail and Stage 5 of the MacLehose Trail split at the pass, each heading off into different terrain. The Wilson Trail runs north to south across Hong Kong Island and the New Territories; the MacLehose Trail traverses the New Territories east to west. Where they briefly coincide and then separate, Sha Tin Pass provides the junction. Hikers arrive from both directions, often stopping at the pavilions near the top before descending into whichever district awaits below. The Lions Pavilion near the summit serves as a rest point and meeting place.

North of Sha Tin Pass, two small villages have persisted in relative isolation from the urban growth below: Mau Tat and Shap Yi Wat. Their position above the pass, tucked against the hillside, kept them outside the development pressure that reshaped most of Sha Tin New Town from the 1970s onward. Sheng Kung Hui, the Anglican Church in Hong Kong, maintains a Diocesan Youth Retreat House at the pass — one of the few permanent built structures in this otherwise trail-and-forest terrain. It occupies a spot that for centuries meant transition: from city to country, from the urban grid of Kowloon to the valley opening out toward Sha Tin's wider sky.