Mt. Huashan

As Cait would remind me it is redundant to put the Mountain in front of Huashan since the ‘Shan’ part is Mandarin for Mountain. However, it will forever be Mt. Huashan to me!

So for those of you who don’t know Cait, Winters, Lars, Josefine and myself spent two days hiking the steepest mountain in China. There were a lot of steps involved in this hike. Now this meant we spent the night on top of a mountain, which was amazing.

The mountain is just outside of Xi'an, about 40 mins on the fast train and apparently just over two if you are driving. It is beautiful, the scenery once you’re on top is breath-taking. I must say it was nice to escape the city and just go for a hike, even if that hike was not easy. The air was so clean and fresh compared to what I have grown accustomed to.

Some things we did on this hike was walk up a lot of stairs, which were steep and very narrow. We sometimes had to walk up almost side wise so our feet would fit. Cait did the sky ladder which is basically straight up the side of the mountain. This was no easy task. Winters, Cait and myself all did the sparrow’s cliff, which is rock climbing part of the mountain to make it to the chess pavilion. Apparently the Taoist monks don’t take the training lightly. We had plans to watch the sunrise, which we did! We even watched the sunset the night before.

We tried to play it safe by making sure to rest and drinking lots of water. We also had brought snacks with us to eat as we hiked. Don’t worry it was mostly healthy snacks. This meant it took us a good 8 hours to make it to North peak, and shortly after we ended up just bellow East Peak to find our resting spot for the night. We also went to bed super early because we had to be up before sunrise so we could find a spot before we missed the action.

We also made friends with some teachers from Xi'an that taught at an international high school. We would often joke about passing each other and would end up in mixed groups with them. Two of the guys from their group ended up running up part of the mountain. It was scary just watching them do that.

Well that was the adventure of Mt. Huashan! I think I may have master’d climbing stairs!