Emeishan

Some fellow travellers I met in Xi’an highly recommended hiking up Emeishan (Mount Emei) so I placed it on the agenda and went for it.  Emeishan is the highest of the Four Sacred Buddhist Mountains of China and it takes a couple days to climb up.  I took the longest way up to see as many temples as I could along the way and the views were just as impressive as the temples.

The day started with a light mist and I didn’t realize my clothes were as wet as they were when the rain picked up so putting on my parka was almost a lot cause by that point.  From mid-afternoon up until the evening, all I could see for views was a wall of white that was indistinguishable from the sky.  I started the trail from the Baoguo temple in the far west area of the mountain so I walked an extra 10km through villages and passed temples before getting to where most people start the ascent from.  This first 10km made me realize I may need to get new shoes at some point even though I’ve only had these shoes for about 6 months and I really like them.  They grip well in most conditions except for two: wet stone and ice.  The aggressive tread of hiking shoes results in less contact points with flatter surfaces so I was slipping and sliding like crazy on the slimy green stone roads and steps of this path.  One particularly curvy concrete road had a thin coat of green algae and it was like I was wearing skates going down that shallow grade. Fortunately, I was going uphill most of the day because going downhill was far worse for slippage.

Just before lunch time, I finally got to see monkeys doing their thing.  I saw some earlier but people were using slingshots to hit them from across the river so I didn’t get any decent photos before they scurried off. I had heard they are overly curious and prolific thieves so I had brought my larger pack to make sure everything was secured inside.  While I did get right up close with them, the monkeys were pretty chill and didn’t bother me at all but I did witness two of them stealing a lady’s lunch.

I was hoping to get to one of the highest temples by nightfall but the stairs were really taking their toll on me so I fell a bit short and made it up to the Xixiangchi temple before dark.  After seeing the rest of trail the next day, staying the night at this temple was a good call.

I was the only one staying the night in the dorm room of the temple and the room shared a wall with the prayer room where a giant Buddha statue is.  I completely forgot how early monks start their day until I woke abruptly at about 5:45am to the beat of the drumming and chanting in the next room.  The rain had continued most of the night so I just laid there trying to maintain some level of comfort under the blankets until the sun started coming up.

There was 7km left on the path to where the upper cable car begins.  While it was below 0° C during the night, it didn’t snow so it just made the snow crusty and slippery.  I slipped a lot and even slid down six to eight steps while trying to ascend a steep section of snow covered stairs.  Once I reached Leidongping where the buses unload tons of tourists that took a bus up the mountain, I caved and spent 20 Yuan on some piece of crap crampons made of a single steel plate you secure to your shoes using only the finest Chinese rope.  The rope snapped on both feet within 5 minutes so I was constantly retying just to get the damn things to stay attached to my shoes.  Even when secured to my shoes, they were almost useless so I ended up taking the safer route by emptying my wallet and taking the cable car the rest of the way to the summit.

I’m certain I would have had a few injuries if I hiked back down to where I started the previous day so I took a long but cozy bus ride back down the mountain to the Emeishan train station.