Day 79: March 23, 2013 Huashan - Not Your Average Walk in the Park

      I’ll just go ahead and start off by saying today was probably the craziest day I have spent in China thus far. The four of us woke up around 6:30 and packed up our bags for a day on the mountain not even knowing what we were getting ourselves into. We stopped by McDonald’s for a quick breakfast and then hopped on a bus to the train station and unfortunately had missed the cheaper bus but got on another for not too much more. We bought round trip tickets for 60 yuan and were on our way to Mount Hua AKA Huashan. After about 2 hours we pull up to this restaurant and everyone gets off and eats. We aren’t really sure what the deal was but they told us we could head to the mountain so we did just that. Without any direction we eventually ended up at an entrance but realized we weren’t near the cable car we were planning to take halfway up. After a little debate I convinced everyone we weren’t going to have enough time to hike the entire mountain and then come back down before our bus left, so we took a cab over to where we could purchase tickets for the cable car. Once we got tickets to the cable car, we actually had to take a bus to get there that was a beautiful ride but nothing compared to the view from the cable car, which was absolutely breathtaking. These mountains were unlike any I have ever seen and were absolutely beautiful.

     Once we got off the cable car we took a quick bathroom break and were ready to start our trek up the mountain. I can see why this mountain is considered to be so dangerous because it is mostly comprised of unbelievably steep stairs that are basically ladders with chains as the only thing separating you from the canyons.

      The whole mountain was covered in these golden locks that are customary to buy and lock on for friends and family to pray for their safety since it is such a notoriously dangerous mountain. The magnitude of them was pretty amazing and they were everywhere you could imagine. I managed to survive without one although at one point someone bumped me and my feet got thrown from the stairs but luckily I was holding onto the chains with my hands or I would have fallen down a huge hill. 

     The crowds died down the further up the mountain we got considering it was a pretty tiring hike, especially if you had come from the base. Throughout the day we managed to make it to the North, Central, East, South, and West Peaks in addition to some things on the way such as Heaven’s Ladder, Blue Dragon Ridge, Gold Lock Pass, and the Cloud Terrace. My favorite of those would probably have to be the Cloud Terrace with the Yanggong Pagoda just because it had such an amazing view and we could actually climb under the chains to get a closer look and some pictures before getting yelled at. The South Peak was also really cool because it was the highest peak so you got an awesome 360 view of the whole park. 

      All of these parts were amazing but I have to say that the Cliffside Path topped them all. This path is regarded as one of the most dangerous trails in the world and has had at least 100 casualties but none of them recorded as the Chinese government has managed to conceal them all. I can’t even describe how unreal the whole experience was because there is no way that anything even remotely close to this would be allowed in the states. There were maybe 2 staff members who gave no instructions and just hooked you in a harness and pointed you in the right direction. There was a ladder down to the plank that was just metal rods going into the mountain, a few steps carved into the mountain, and then the actual plank was just wooden boards attached by giant metal staples that actually creaked as you walked across them. The harnesses seemed pretty sturdy although we were pretty confident that if we did fall the line they were attached to would probably not hold our weight. The most comforting part about the whole thing was probably the metal chains drilled into the wall because I figured even if I slipped there was no way I was letting go of those and they seemed pretty secure as they were bolted into the mountain.

     So now that we have some background and context I’ll give a little overview of how the actual walk went. First of all, we had to beg Bryan to even go because he is pretty scared of heights not to mention the fact that he is a lot bigger than the rest of us, which is not very comforting when walking on little wooden boards.  We told him he would forever regret it if he didn’t go and managed to drag him along for the ride. After we all got harnessed up, Ron led the pack followed by Jess and then myself and Bryan. Initially, getting onto the ladder down wasn’t so bad but then you looked down and it was a whole different ball game. You could literally see straight down to the base of the mountain thousands of feet away. Ron was the first to catch the view and yelled up, “Bryan, if I am being completely honest with you, you …” and was cut off by Jess telling him to stop. I then listened to them whisper back and forth basically saying that he is not going to like the view down and that he might want to turn back. They settled on just yelling back up for him not to look down and we continued on our way. Bryan was definitely the most uncomfortable I have ever seen him and told me I was going to have to talk him through the whole thing so that is exactly what I did. The whole way down the ladder I told him when to take a step and made sure his feet were where they needed to be, even placing his feet for him sometimes so he didn’t have to look down. Once we made it down to the plank things went a little smoother. He could just look straightforward into the rock and imagine there was nothing behind him. I, on the other hand, was turned around as much as I could to enjoy the ridiculous view and take as many pictures as possible. Bryan decided he was going to have to look down at some point and we told him the perfect spot that had a great view and was really close to the end. Making it to the end was an awesome feeling as we all appreciated having solid ground to walk on. We unhooked our harnesses and walked around the corner only to find a dead end. Our hearts all sunk as we realized we were going to have to go all the way back to where we started!

      This wouldn’t have been all that bad other than the fact that there were tons of people still coming towards us so we were going to have to pass all of them just to get back. Bryan was definitely the least happy about this especially considering he had now looked down. We all sucked it up and put a lot of trust in the strangers around us to unhook and rehook us as we walked around them. The hardest part was when we weren’t even on the plank and we had to leave room in these little foot holes carved into the mountain for both peoples’ feet to fit while climbing around one another. We also ran into a couple that was pretty freaked out in a pretty inconvenient location right where the plank met the ladder so it was a struggle to make it across them. After that we were in the clear and just had the ladder up until we were home free. We made sure to get a few last pictures and then were back to where we started and got our harnesses taken off.

    With our adrenaline pumping we were ready to make it up to the South Peak, which we had not yet seen. The climb was pretty tiring but the view was well worth it for the 360 view as I said before. We were officially ready to call it a day after that and started our walk down the mountain, enjoying the fact that we got to go down rather than up for once. Pretty quickly we realized that we had grossly underestimated how long it would it would take to get down the mountain so we were going to have to pick up the pace if we were going to make it down the mountain by 6:30, when our bus was scheduled to leave. With that we literally started running down this mountain as fast as we could going down stairs that are basically ladders, just waiting for myself to fall and crack my skull open. We started seeing signs after we had been descending for some time that said over 6 km, meaning we still had quite a ways to go. The terrain eventually flattened out a little into these slopes rather than stairs where we just straight ran. Our knees were all killing us and we were we exhausted since we had only stopped for one water break in 2 hours of moving as quickly as we could. 

     Bryan had gone a little ahead while the rest of us were looking at time as it was already 6:30 and decided there was no point in running the rest of the way since we were already going to miss the bus. After we had just thrown in the towel, we ran into Bryan who had asked a Chinese woman to call the bus company and figured out that the last bus was scheduled to leave at 7 instead of 6:30 and conveniently enough the stop was only a 30 minutes walk away, according to this women. This was absolute crap because we sprinted the whole way and it took us about 35 minutes and we were expecting to have missed the bus once again when we saw one down the street. We gave it all we had to run for it and upon arrival were told it wasn’t the right bus. They pointed us to another bus however so one last time we ran to the next bus which thank the lord was ours.  At this point, no exaggeration, we could all barely move enough to make it up the stairs of the bus and to our seats. 

Selfy of how I felt after the hike!

     Bryan was nice enough to get us all giant water bottles and then we all just collapsed in our seats. The worst part about the whole thing was that the bus sat there until 7:30 when they assured us earlier that it would not wait for anyone which was apparently code for it would wait for anyone except us. That extra 30 minutes could have made our descent a little less miserable but either way I guess it wasn’t exactly ideal. We all reminisced about how ridiculous the last few hours had been and how we couldn’t have been happier to be on the bus. If we missed the bus I don’t even know what we would have done considering none of us even had our passports, meaning we would’ve had a hard time getting a hostel or a train ticket home and even if we could somehow find a cab to take us back it would have been absurdly expensive for such a long ride. 

     Overcome by relief, we all just passed out on the way back only to wake up with even more soreness than when we fell asleep. Getting up out of our seats was absolutely hilarious to watch but was horribly painful. I also had a awful head ache probably caused by the 7,000 ft elevation change in a matter of hours and was in dire need of some food considering Jess and I had only had some nuts since breakfast. We made it back to the hostel making sure to stay on the first level of the bus home and ordered some dinner. I still felt awful but forced myself to drink a ton of water and ordered some cream of mushroom soup and carbonara. It was all really good even though I still didn’t feel that well and could barely get up out of my seat. After struggling to get up to the second floor and back down, I took an Advil and hopped in the shower, which was more than needed.  I felt a little better after that and just crawled up into my bed, very slowly I might add, and decided there was no way I was getting back down. We all just staying in the room and exchanged pictures from the day and then called it a night after agreeing we had all earned a day to sleep in.