HUANGLONG NATIONAL PARK

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Up early this morning to catch our flight to Huanglong airport to go to two popular national parks HuangLong and Jiuzhaigou. After a flight delay (our destination is at 3500m altitude) we headed off for a hour flight. Oh i had my first proper conversation in mandarin with a nice girl at the airport.

Descending into HuangLong airport was pretty interesting, as there are huge mountains beside and above you and still no sign of anywhere flat to land. we met our taxi driver, Tao who got us on our way. We stopped for some Yak for lunch at a little town on the way and kept going along the winding road (oh yeah bilbo's birthday today !)

HuangLong National Park is at about 4000m altitude at the foot of a 5800m snoow covered mountain. There are excellent boardwalks the whole way around the 12km circuit from top to bottom. We caught the cable car up and took the boardwalks down, some didi the opposite - may i suggest the former. The scenery is incredible, some of the most beautiful high alpine pine forests I have ever seen. Once you reach the river the real eye candy is revealed. the area is a huge deposit of travertine, which when washed down by the streams of melting snow, deposit minerals which build up over time to form pool walls. these pools then collect the minerals as the water spills over these waterfall terraces leaving the pools bottom of the pools in an amazing array of colours. Our photos do not do this place justice and it is the best, largest example of this natural phenomena in the world apparently.

At sundown we found our driver and headed along the road to Jiuzhaigou to our Hotel. The clouds started to close in and I realised that the mountain we were on was taller than the height of the plane i parachuted out of once - wow. the clouds belonged there !

STUFF -
OXYGEN - At these altitudes lack of oxygen is a problem. We all took some vials of medicine that is supposed to help but I had a dull headache for half the day until I got used to it and you could notice difficulty getting your muscles performing. They have huts where you can get oxygen and you can even buy your own can.
WEATHER - i think this is the real killer here, We had perfect weather and did the walk in shorts and tshirt but you really are in the elements att this height. Apparently in winter if it starts snowing and you are on the road you have one hour to get our before you are buried and dead (not the other way around). Sounds a bit dramatic but the park facilities are excellent and well equipped, the roads are being upgraded and will be finished in one year so a little common sense and you'll be fine.

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Photos

ME WITH MY HEAD IN THE CLOUDS
racing clouds along the windy road at 4000m +

JACK AND THE MOUNTAIN
we stopped to get some photos, so Jack and i quickly ran up this small hill for a better spot and I couldn't force enough oxygen into mmy lungs as we ran, it was instantly exhausting even though we weren't tired. it was like an invisible wall