Huashan

There was only one reason why I wanted to go to Mount Huashan and it ended up being a huge waste of time and money.  That one reason was for the Plank Walk, the supposed most dangerous hike in the world.  The tour guide on the bus tried to translate into English that the North peak entrance and cable car were closed that day so we had to go to the west peak instead.  That ended up being wrong and it caused a lot of confusion for me later in the day.  I spent three hours in line to get to a shuttle bus to drive to the cable car. Three Hours!  That meant I had a maximum of two hours to myself once at the top.

A Chinese girl that sat next to me on the bus had to leave the line to go find our guide who forgot to give us our tickets.  Once inside the ticket center building, what used to be a somewhat civilized line of people instantly became an angry mob running towards the shuttle buses.  I tried my best to push back against the crowd because I needed to go back to get my ticket but the crowd was too strong.  Like trying to swim out of a rip tide, I just slid over to a wall eventually and let the mob surge by until my ticket arrived.

After getting to the top of what I understood to be the West peak, I found a map saying I was at the North peak and it was all uphill from there to the East peak where the plank walk was.  The stairs were narrow so it took a long time to pass all the slow Chinese tourists but I finally made it to the East Peak.  Unfortunately, the entrance of the plank walk was gated off.  The one reason I wanted to come here and after all that waiting it was closed. Ugh!!

I had very little time left so I tried to complete the loop between the five peaks to circle back to the cable car.  The first cable car ticket booth wouldn’t accept my ticket so I had to buy another one which ended up being identical to the first.  The ticket booth on top of the mountain also didn’t accept my return ticket so I had to buy another one.  It wasn’t until I got on the cable car that I realized I was heading down the opposite side of the mountain.

I had been following maps and signs on the path to get here but the orientation of the maps kept changing and North was usually facing south.   I ended up going down to the West Peak entrance where I had to buy a ticket for a shuttle to take me back to the North Peak 45 minutes away where my bus was waiting.  Fortunately, the bus didn’t leave without me and the guide refunded some of the money for the tickets that weren’t accepted but it still ended up being an expensive and frustrating ordeal.