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Published: October 26th 2011
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Now seeing your all excited because I whacked an exclamation mark onto the end of Mt.Huashan you might want to figure out what it is first, apart from obviously being a mountain. (Go on Wikipedia and a have a look) The long and the short of it is Mt. Hua is one of China’s five sacred Taoist mountains. The mountain has 5 peaks with the tallest having an elevation of 2160m. Just a little bit bigger than mighty Castle Hill back home. The mountain is home to gods, fairies and mythical dragons which I met but more on that later on…
Before I climbed I met this awesome chick from America called Ashley. We weren’t besties straight away but a night out to dinner and a few drinks at the bar and we were great mates. Waking up Saturday we decided to climb the mountain the next day. We spent a few minutes planning, buying noodles, stealing Mumma’s chopsticks and deciding to go at 9am the next morning. That plan didn’t quite happen and we eventually ended up getting to the mountain entrance at 3pm. No worries though, we had torches (flashlights if your American) for when it got dark
and Ash’s middle name was Billy while mine was Goat. The first couple of hours were relatively easy going. It’s just a gentle sloping path with the odd set of stairs. About every 500m there is a vendor flogging Redbull, noodles and cold cucumbers chilled in mountain water. Also the amount of rubbish strewn about was terrible. A natural attraction like this in Australia would be a fair bit cleaner and ranger jumping out from behind every koala telling you to keep it clean.
The going was getting tougher the further we went and now it was slowly turning to night. At 6pm something a little magical happened. Because so many people hike the mountain at night to get the sunrise the trail is lit. We were climbing a super steep set of stairs cut into the mountain and wallah! A long string of fairy lights next to us lit up and little garden light things glowed a soft yellow reflecting off the guide chains. From there it was all hiking in the darkness with pink and purple lights glowing next to you. Little cats would follow along next to you unseen and the clouds descended onto the trail.
Totally spooky Lord of the Rings stuff but more was to come.
Meeting the Gods
I’m not really much of a superstitious person but there is nothing wrong with a tiny bit of belief. Every now and again while going up the mountain I would feel the urge to pick up a piece litter and bin it. Each time thinking to myself this is for you mountain gods! I came up to this one corner which had a bit more rubbish than usual and decided to bin it all, the whole time thinking the gods will reward me. Bang, turn the corner and there sitting on the ground in front of Ash and I were two $20 yuan notes. Now come on, it’s lucky to find 5 bucks but $40! I was suitably impressed.
Moving on we had finally climbed enough for the day and we were ready to hit the hay. We rocked up to our hotel that we had picked from Lonely Planet and of course the charming hotel owners had a fair crack at ripping us off. The price for a double room was 610 yaun! As if were paying that, so we settled for
85 each for the dorm, lucky the mountain gods had chipped in. The night was freezing cold as we huddled together for warmth under 3 layers of dirty doona’s while fully dressed. After a few hours of fitful sleep we decided to start trekking for East Peak to catch the sunrise. Stupidly we left at 4am which meant we got there at 5:20, quicker than we thought. Ash and I then spent a solid hour being very, very cold. I truly have never been that freezing. The thing that was really killing me was actually my bum in jeans. I sat on a rock and was worried that I was going to be glued on and have to spend eternity as the Frozen Statue of the Silly Western Boy. To top it off it was super cloudy and the sky just got slowly lighter with zero sun. But! There is a tradition that you take a gold lock up the mountain and lock into the chains for good luck. So I carved my name on one side of it and Flynn’s on the other. So bro, you are up there somewhere on Mt. Huashan with the mountain gods. We decided
to skip the other peaks as we were pretty shagged by now due to terrible sleep and all the hiking. We cheated a bit by taking the cable car down before heading home to warm Xi’an.
In reality the mountain isn’t really that dangerous, we passed a 5 year old kid with his dad on the way up and there were plenty of parents carrying their children. Like all things you just have to use a bit of common sense and hold onto the chains. Wearing proper shoes and taking warm clothing is common sense as well.
Overall the trip was awesome. The mountain scenery is really something different from Australia and I’m glad I choose to climb. What also made it so good was climbing it and hanging out with Ashley for the weekend. It was great fun comparing America to Australia and me having to translate every second word I said into proper English, or sitting by a mountain stream eating Lotte Dreamy Cakes together and debating whether to buy a cucumber or not. So thanks Ashley for the good times and the mad weekend, thanks Mt. Huashan and keep reading for the next travel blog
update: What Traveling is all About!
Zinny Zan Zin!
P.S There should be photos on my other blogs and come back to this one later to see more. Annoyingly TravelBlog backs up there servers between 12-1 which means no photo’s as I quickly finish this at 11:50.
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Ashley
non-member comment
hooahhhhshaan!
nice photos boungie;)