Day 120: Huà Mountain, Shaanxi Province

We headed out early and caught a bus to the base of the Huà Mountain to begin our trekking. We took a cable car up to the North Peak (there are five peaks to the mountain). When we got off, we dropped off our stuff at a hostel and began exploring. The hostel that we are staying in is a dump that is overpriced. Our beds are made of wood with a sheet over it and there is no running water.

The mountains were covered with Chinese tourists, many of which were old. I was surprised to see all of these old people walking throughout the mountains. Throughout the day, we saw many older people carrying goods up the mountain. Think about it, there are stores and hostels up here and no elevator to transport goods in (the cable car is strictly used for tourists), so the trails do have older men carrying up loads of goods.

Crazy!

The views from the mountain were beautiful. You will see in some of these photos metal locks and red ribbons. These are a symbol of good luck, so people will buy a lock and have their name engraved in it and then lock it to something up on the mountain. Not sure why they choose here, maybe because they are afraid of heights and/or falling off!

We spent the afternoon jumping from peak to peak. The hike was strenuous, either straight up or straight down, at some points, literally!!

I have an amazing fear of heights, so my hands remained soaking wet and my mind racing throughout the day! At one of the peaks we were able to climb around the edge of the mountain; this was absolutely scary as hell. We were strapped in with a shoulder harness that I could see myself easily popping out of if I fell. I can't stress how creepy this was, especially when you are relying on Chinese safety equipment!!

Here is a link to my walking across. It was filmed with my GoPro and I had the waterproof case on it, so, unfortunately, you can't hear much.

http://youtu.be/gEVlXHW8V6A

Hope the link works out good, no telling when your in China what is going to happen on the Internet.

Once we returned to safe ground and unstrapped our harness, I let out a sigh of great relief... I'm alive! Since we have knocked out all the peaks, we decided to head back to the hostel and rest.

Notice how the people are clenching to the chain for dear life. Some of the Chinese people were so scared of heights that they were walking down the stairs backwards. One wouldn't switch sides when foot traffic was coming her way.

First thing I wanted to do, shower! "Sorry, no running water!" Good God, I have to sleep in all of the filth that is covering my body! I have to peel my legs apart when I lay down! Joseph and I resisted buying all the bottled water on the mountain to wash off with and ordered some dinner. It was pretty cool being on top of this mountain under the moon with virtually no one around.