Ch 32: What is Beautiful, What is Dangerous

July 30/31

Many if not most guidebooks tout Huang Shan (Yellow Mountain) as THE mountain to climb in China. They say that "Once you have climbed HuangShan there is no need to climb any other mountain in your life time bc HuangShan is the most majestic". We headed out to Tunxi a gateway town to HuangShan on July 30th to find out if the truth would be as good as advertised.

Tunxi is a small town, one of the smallest we've stayed in and it appears that most visitors come for HuangShan which is 1 hour away. We stayed at the HuangShan International Youth Hostel, which again cators to visitors who come to climb HangShan. The town did not appear to have much else. The day at HuangShan would be interesting.

When we arrived we lined up, got our tickets, and began the accent. From the get go it was easy to see that the mountain itself was as good as advertised. The colors and shapes were right out of a chinese painting. HuangShan is a series of mountain ranges- each one a prototype for how a chinese mountain should look whether you see it in a painting or read it in a mythical story. The accent itself was MUCH tougher then we expected. The west side had a more challenging climb I was told but I vastly underestimated how difficult it could be. There are stone carved stairs but the incline is actually dangerous and many sections require climbing on all fours or would not be possible with the assistance of rope/chains. My hat goes off to the swarms of chinese tourists who scaled over the terrain like professionals. They did it without a care for the danger. Bravery or foolishness? I don't know if there was a difference in this case.

They say that only those that lack imagination have no fear. I can honestly say that I was vividly using my imagination on the way up. The views from the top were spectacular and I would definitely say that this mountain is worth the time for the trip and the effort for the climb. Funny thing, we met college students on the mountain who told us the well known saying about Huang Shan. It was slightly different from our guidebooks. It goes like this.

"Once you climb HuangShan there is no need to climb other mountains for HuangShan is the most DANGEROUS to climb in China". I suppose that last part was lost in the translation. Whoops.