Hua Shan Pt 2
Published June 18, 2011
There were three staircases. On the left, a ridiculous snow pile covered each step leading upwards and a sign that said danger, do not pass. Whew. I hadn’t planned on cracking my head open today, so I was glad that to the two paths on the right were cleared and walkable. Looking up however, my stomach dropped and a nervous laugh escaped. What seemed like 10 stories of stairs rose above me enclosed by a narrow corridor of mountain and the exit was nowhere to be seen. I was seeing first hand what the tower of Babylon might have looked like.
Halfway up the 10 story looking staircase, still the exit yet to be seen.
I feared how many more similar stairways were ahead of us. We rounded the corner and found ourselves on a flat section of the mountain. I turned around. The west peak was staring me in the face and told me that we had about half hour to go. Amazing.
When we arrived at north peak, it was surreal. Not the view, but the fact that we made it. We made it after 4 hours of trekking up the hill chewing on overpriced oreos and knock off gatoraide!
Many tourists didn’t bother climbing up much farther than north peak. To arrive to the west peak you have to climb an insane looking stairway up the dragon’s back of the mountain. Its a hard climb and both sides of the path drop precariously into the unknown. As we rested at north peak to enjoy our accomplishment, a moment of melancholy came upon me because on one hand I had done what I had set out to do, but nobody recognized my accomplishment. As George Jung says in Blow, It was the greatest feeling I ever had. Followed abruptly by the worst feeling I ever had. It’s funny thinking back about this because even though it meant nothing to anybody, I remember having a sick smile on my face.
The view of the walk to west peak from north peak.
The famous stairway to west peak, up the narrowest path of the mountain. Sometimes you could hear the porters singing as they carried 50lb up the path.
As light started to become scarce, we scurried to find a place to stay. Numerous hostels are on Hua Shan, but the maps are not clear as to how many flights of stairs you have to climb until you reach one. We ended up at one exceptionally empty hostel. At first, we were going to do the cheap option of a dorm bed, but we figured it would be brutally cold, so we opted for a double room. The hotel wanted $100 to which I scoffed and said no, $20 each. The manager laughed at me and said no to which I laughed too and started walking away. Matt had to use the washroom (an over decorated hole off the side of the mountain) and I waited. Out of nowhere I saw a girl running towards me and in a huff of breath, she smiled and said to me OK $20. Sweet. We put our bags down since it was a lockable room and we watched the sunset off the side of west peak.
Sunset on west peak.
I had run off on my own for a bit because Matt was tired. I was trying to get some good shots of the east peak when I decided to climb past some barriers and up some boulders to get a better view. As I set up my camera to take some time lapses, another girl ran up with an odd baseball cap wearing a huge clash of color. It was like she jumped out of a Dragon Ball comic book all bubbly and stuff. She said something to me in mandarin to which I smiled and nodded having no clue what she just said.
I started speaking english out of habit and amazingly she understood. We talked a bit. She was traveling alone from Shanghai and was seeing Hua Shan for the first time. At this point I was still yelling down at her from my boulder so she climbed up and set up her camera beside mine. We chatted a bit about photography and she pointed to the hotel across the chasm over at east peak, her stay for the night. I told her that was going to be at least another hour of climbing and she should run off now if she wanted to save any light and she refused saying she has a flash light. I laughed. Crazy chinese people. We ended up sharing photos and parted ways shortly after, myself a bit amazed that I would meet someone of all places here.
Our lovely hostel
The lights are actually stairways lining the mountain paths. You can climb at night with a flashlight if you’re brave enough.
The room felt like a fridge. Bundle up, I said to matt, wear everything. This isn’t much different from camping in the Canadian spring so I was used to this biting frost. It was just odd to have it feel this cold within the confines of what appeared to be a perfectly hospitable room. I wore two pairs of socks, pants, coats, a hat and buried myself under the covers, using own breath as my sole source of heat.
I woke up at 530am unable to fall asleep again. I started packing trying not to wake Matt, but at the last minute he rose as well. We decided it was perfect timing anyhow for us to go out and catch the sunrise. It must’ve been -3 or so on the mountain because my breath was fogging up my glasses. Nobody on the mountain. We walked up to west peak and perched outselves on a small outcrop waiting. The result was nothing short of spectacular. Did you know that the sun rises within the span of minutes? Within such a short time, I found myself warming up and unable to look directly at the orange ball of warmth coating every inch of the mountain.
Sunrise
There are a number of items of ridiculousness on Hua Shan for those willing to brave the walk. One of these is called Chess playing pavillion. This place was intriguing because to reach it, you would have to walk off what seemed like the cliff of the mountain, backwards, with only chains to hold on to before reaching a pavillion that had no business being built there.
Aptly named “sparrow walk”. Because if it takes a bird to be able to walk off here, how fucked are you as a man?
Chess playing pavillion. Sadly, it was closed when we got there, due to the snow.
We continued on towards south peak. If south peak’s main attraction “Cliff Plank Walk” was closed, I would have to find someone to throw off the mountain. I had come all the way to China for this so it better damn well be open.
South peak’s main gate.
This man was the guard. Ahead, the cliff plank walk.
The entrance to the cliff plank walk was grand. We walked across numerous hostels, a bell tower a grand gate and then another pass built of stone. Everything only worked to build up my anticipation and as I arrived I saw that the gate was closed! SHIT! It can’t be! I was sulking in the recesses of the entrance when all of a sudden a man appeared and sat as you see above. Someone out there likes me. He told me he needed 30RMB to pay for insurance and the harness. What? Insurnace? If I fall off the mountain there’s no way in hell you’d find my body anyway. I assumed that I was merely paying for the future loss to the harness.
My gut was in a knot at this point. I pondered whether to bring my camera, but I convinced myself that the pictures would be worth the risk. The plank walk was insane. You walk towards the wall you see above and all of a sudden there is no place to go except down. Looking down, you see that some intelligent individual has made a ladder in the narrow confines of the mountain using two bars of loosely placed metal in stone.
Looking down
These bars didn’t exactly have my vote of confidence
Going down the ladder was ridiculous. The wind was blowing in my face and at any point I felt like if I didn’t hang on with all my strength I’d be blown off only to be remembered by my stupidity since my body would have probably splattered so hard i’d be little more than a speck on this epic mountain. When I reached the bottom of the ladder, I looked to the left only to see that the plank walk was about 20 ft away. What the fuck. I drew my eyes from the wood, back to my feet and noticed the same clever individual had chiseled into the mountain foot holds. So I put my feet in them and was very much ready to admit defeat until I realized they were actually much more sturdy than the two bar ladder design. I shuffled over in short time and made it to the plank walk.
The foot holds
WOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOO!!! Ignore my appearance. Insanity has clearly caught up with me.
Now you might ask at this point, what exactly is on the other side? To answer that question, I’d have to say with many things in life, the value is in the adventure and not the final destination. And I say this because the other side had nothing. A small temple with merely a plaque to which we had to walk backwards back on the plank walk and back up the ladder to where we started! What made it even more crazy was that someone else decided to come down while we were going up, so we had to fit two of us in that narrow corridor of rock and metal. Is insanity worth it? …Hell yea.
East Peak
View down from the other side of the image above
Being a poser. Really though, Hua Shan was beautiful.
Finally, we had hit all four peaks. It took six hours since sunrise to climb it all, and we were ready to get a good meal back at Xian. We started our way down to the cable car from east peak and found that walking down the hill was much faster but not any easier on the knees.
Porters with their empty baskets going back down the mountain for more. Where possible these men would always take the hard path or solder’s path as it was called.
On the other side of that mountain is where our hotel was. It was a six hour trek to get to east peak from west.
Experiencing Hua Shan was similar to the lightness felt with any sort of love. It was indescribable. So many times in this place I sat wishing I had a better way to capture this experience but I understood in my heart that living it was the only way to capture it best. I was on a high for the next week and checked another item off the bucket list. Is this what really living feels like? I thought, as I rode the cable car back down, watching the ease in which technology was carrying me back to reality.
Matt left after this section of the trip and I was left to my own devices for the first time. Nervous didn’t begin to describe what I felt, but at the same time having accomplished something so exhilarating gave me the confidence to take anything at this point. Unfortunately I was pretty reckless to begin with, so if recklessness was my crack, then confidence was my heroin. The following couple weeks led me to have an even larger love for China and I set out to discover it with my heart open like never before.