Mt. Huashan, I Hear the Views are Amazing!

Last weekend Matt and I went to visit Mt. Huashan.  I had previously heard about this on Pinterest, and once I realized that it was in Xi'an, I was very eager to visit.  It's billed on their website as "the most precipitous mountain in China."  It has 5 peaks and it is quite a hike.  If you have heard of it before, it was probably for the particular area called "planked path," which of course, I wanted to see.

Previously I had mentioned that Matt and I are planning to do the Great Wall Half Marathon. We are in no shape to do the full especially with the advertised "5164 steps."  After my painful experience at the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, I realized I definitely needed some serious step training before the half.  Walking up the 32 flights of steps in my apartment building, while challenging and also painful, was boring as anything! Hence, my plan to visit Mt. Huashan.

I explained to Matt my reasons for wanting to go and the various ways to get there.  (Bus, train, ordering a private car.) Who are we kidding, there was no way we were going to take a bus and the train often just feels like too much trouble trying to get a taxi to take us to the station and having to arrive on time or miss the train, so we decided on a private car and we also decided to go out there the evening before and spend the night in a nearby hotel so we could get an early start in the morning and have the whole day to spend on the mountain.  Assuming we would be tired afterwards, we also got the hotel for the following night and booked the car for Sunday afternoon to take us back.

The next morning, after a very Chinese breakfast during which we were stared at quite a bit as the only westerners staying at the hotel, we were ready to go.  As usual, we were severely overcharged for a taxi which at the last minute added two more people.  We were waiting quite some time because the man was arguing with one of the ladies at the front desk.  They got in and he said, "Hello, may I ask you what they are charging you for this ride?"

We said, "70."

"That is also what they are charging us.  I am very disappointed. We are going to the train station and that should only be 50."

"Unfortunately, we have gotten used to it." Matt replied.

"I am Chinese," he said, "but I am from Hong Kong, I tried to tell them this is wrong but they don't care." Then he added, "You are going to the mountain which is even closer. It is about half the distance."

So, basically they were ripping us all off, but we were getting it worse.  Again, we are used to it and we can't argue with them, which apparently didn't help anyway.

Eventually, we made it to the mountain.  Oh, and I forgot to add that it was completely cloudy and raining fairly hard.  Everyone outside seemed to have on rain ponchos.  We went into the convenience store outside the visitor center and purchased two ponchos.

Then we went inside and purchased a map.  The whole place was very confusing and people kept cutting in line in front of us. (Very annoying.) We weren't even sure if we were in the right place, but then I noticed an information desk so we went over there to make sure we were in the right place.  One of the girls there spoke English and she said we were in the right place to buy tickets.  We showed her our map and asked where we were and how long would it take to get up the mountain if we didn't take the cable car?

She pointed to the bottom of the map and said the shuttle will take you to either the east cable car (20 minutes) or the west cable car (40 minutes).   Here is the map in English.  (Ours was entirely in Chinese.)

Map of Mt. Huashan

Basically, the west cable car will pretty much take you all the way to the top.  The east cable car takes you to North Peak.  From there, it is about a 3 or 4 hour hike to East Peak. We asked how long a hike to East Peak if we didn't take the cable car, to which she replied, "About 7 hours."

Matt and I looked at each other, and decided we were fine with a 3 or 4 hour hike up and 7 hours uphill was overkill.  After all, we still had to come down.  We purchased our tickets for the mountain, donned our ponchos, and boarded the shuttle bus in the rain.  We got off the shuttle 20 minutes later and walked past the trail to "circumvent the mountain." It looked very steep and very long despite the clouds hiding most of the mountain.

This is the start of the trail if you don't take the east cable car.

We walked further on to purchase the cable car tickets.  My plan, which I discussed with Matt, was to take the cable car up to North Peak, hike on to East Peak, and then go see Plank Path, and then hike all the way back down the mountain without using the cable car because we needed the downhill training.  Matt agreed and we purchased one way cable car tickets and then boarded the cable car.  If you look back at the map, we got on where it says "Start" and got off at North Peak where it says "End." (I added in the larger words so you can see where we went.)  We got off at North Peak and proceeded to hike up to where it says "East Peak."  As you can see, we still had quite a hike, even with the cable car "cheat."

I hear the views from the cable cars are amazing, but all we could see was white.  

The entire way up was nothing but stairs. And very steep stairs at that!

Matt not looking too eager to go up.  

About five minutes after we got off the cable car it stopped raining! We were very happy about that.  It was still very cold, about 50 degrees F or 10 C. I quickly shoved my poncho into my waist pack in case it rained again and up we went. The mountain was pretty crowded considering the poor weather conditions but I hear the crowds are much worse in summer and the temps can be very hot.

We were moving along at a pretty good clip.  I was wearing a windbreaker, over a warm running shirt, over a tank top.  After about 15 minutes, I figured I would take off the running shirt and just leave on the tank top and the windbreaker but I was so sweaty already that I just took both off and was just wearing my tank top.  Everyone else was bundled in jackets so I probably looked really strange because it was not at all warm. Even Matt was asking me, "Aren't you cold?" But, I also noticed that everyone else was really huffing and puffing and hanging onto the chains and resting all over the place.  I was passing people all over the place so I think some of my stair work had paid off.  I was feeling quite fit!

A brief glimpse of the view!

Midway up, the clouds broke and the sun came out.  It lasted about two minutes and then the clouds rolled right back in! Eventually we made it to East Peak which is supposed to have the best view of the sunrise.  Many people sleep at the hotel at the top of East Peak in order to see the sun rise in the morning.  As we looked out from the summit, it was rather anti-climatic.  Still, we took a selfie at the top because it was kind of funny.

East Peak, I swear it! Although it could have been anywhere...

Looking out, all we could see was white.  A man came by and saw us and asked if we would like some help so he took our picture for us except that the iPod must have been on video because that is what he took so here it is:

It's only 6 seconds but I included it because you can see all of the locks that are all over the place.  Those locks are getting to be quite a thing these days.  Paris has that Love Bridge, and I noticed it starting in the English Garden in Munich.  They were all over Mt. Huashan.  They sell them on the mountain and they will engrave them for you with your names on them.  Personally, I think it looks rather unattractive and should not be encouraged but that's just me.  

After East Peak, we went off to find Planked Path.  We ended up at the top of South Peak and then had to go back down again to finally make it to Planked Path.  Once there, you need to climb down a ladder on the side of the mountain to get to the plank.  The line didn't seem too long, but you could tell that it was still going to take forever because they would only let a few people go down at a time.  Also, you still couldn't see ANYTHING! So what was the point of hanging off a cliff/plank if you couldn't even see how treacherous it was? We decided to skip it and went into one of the many restaurants up there to get something to eat.  

 This wasn't the restaurant, just a place where we got a snack earlier in the day.  Apparently I didn't take any pictures of the restaurants but they were all over and you literally had to walk through them to continue on with the hike.

The Ladder in the Sky

 This was on the way up to East Peak.  It's called the "Ladder in the Sky."

This was what the beginning of the downward trail looked like.

 After we ate, we decided that since we had already climbed to the top of the highest peak (South Peak) we were done hiking upward and it was time to head down.  It was probably around 3:30 by this time, and we had been on the mountain about 5 hours.  At this point, I said, "Besides, it will take us a couple of hours to get down especially since we aren't taking the cable car." We walked until we got to the point where one sign pointed to a path that said it was going to the East Cable Car, and the other sign said, "Circumvent the Mountain." It was here that I said, "This is where we should go down because we said we were going to walk down.  The cable car is that way but we said we weren't going to take the cable car down."  Again, Matt agreed,  so down we went.  After about 20 minutes and good distance downward on some very narrow steps Matt said he needed a break.  I said "Fine."

While we were resting, it finally dawns on Matt that we aren't taking the cable car down and he seems genuinely shocked by this fact, despite me asking him at the beginning, and reminding him again before we started down the mountain.    At this point it was too late to go back up again and he would just need to suck it up and keep going downward which eventually he did but not without telling me the entire way down how much his legs hurt and how ridiculous it was to walk down etc.

Look how far that is!

I didn't really see the need to complain so much since it wasn't going to get us down any faster but some of his complaints were actually kind of funny so I let him go on and on and on....

Taking a rest midway down or so.

Matt taking a call from his mother.  Any excuse for a break.

A bit of a clearer view of the trail we came down.
(It was the same one we passed on the way to the cable car)

Eventually we made it down none the worse for the wear.  I actually felt surprisingly good.  The air was so clean and fresh. We boarded the shuttle bus to go back to the visitor station where I bought a book with pictures of the views since I missed most of them. According to Fitbit we took 27,990 steps that day, and climbed 337 floors. (Fitbit only counts floors up and not down so basically double it for the flights of stair.) It said 11.5 miles but it was probably more like 10 since some of those steps were really narrow. I'm sure we will try and make it back another day since it is just a 2 hour drive from where we are living. And next time we won't bother staying at a hotel because this is what our hotel room looked like:

Japanese Style Hotel Room

Yeah, because after I climb Mount Huashan, I want to squat down as much as possible and sleep and sit on the floor.  It feels really good. 

And surprisingly, after all that, I wasn't nearly as sore as I was when I just climbed the 32 floors in my apartment building and then went for a 4 mile run.  I definitely think we are ready for the Wall!