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Published: April 30th 2010
This is China’s most beautiful mountain. It was quite the mission to get there as we had to take a 16 hour over night train. I really enjoy these trains, but 16 hours is a bit much. We arrived at 11 am and started to climb after a good breakfast of green onion cakes!
This mountain is similar to the previous one in that there are stairs carved out of the granite mountain side. This one though was not a holy mountain and thus had no temples or calligraphy on the cliff faces. The work that went into it was incredible. The granite stairs have details carved into them to make them look like a wood grain. There are also carved railings on the mountain side. Our ascent was beautiful, with sunshine highlighting our surroundings. We spent the night on top of the mountain to give ourselves a full day to clamber down the more difficult route which apparently takes 8 hours to descend. We woke up to a thick and heavy fog. At first we were disappointed, but as we descended I enjoyed the eeriness the fog created. The wind was incredibly strong and at times we were hanging
on for our dear lives. We walked along the top of some rocks only being able to see 2 m around you, the path disappeared both in front of you, but it also dropped steeply into the mists on either side. It gave me chills! At one point we descended steeply through a passage 50cm wide which was created by a huge rock cracked in half. It felt very mysterious, and we were often greeted with glimpses of the sheer grandeur of these mountains when the fog momentarily opened up. When we reached the bottom we were back on the train.
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