Climbing the steepest mountain in China

An early start today, we took in the hotel buffet breakfast. An amazing affair, with just about anything you could possibly want for breakfast. We were greeted by Sam, a twenty-something boy from NZ via Brisbane, who studied Mandarin at uni, and is now perfecting it in Xi’an. He managed the dining room, and looked after us very well, training the barista in the art of a flat white, after the asked him what we meant when we asked for flat water... haha.

We were collected by Phoenix and Mr Wu, for the long drive towards Mount Huashan, the mountain with the sheerest cliffs in all of China. There are five peaks on the top, and we would decide how many peaks we would conquer once there.

It was a two hour drive in our people mover to the tour base, then we had to jump on a company bus for a 40 minute ride up to the base of the gondola. 350 stairs greeted us to the gondola staging area, or, you could catch a luge, and be towed up. Guess what we did...

The gondola ride was another 20 minutes, and we marvelled at the technology and how they made it, as it was indeed very steep.Read more