Stairway to Heaven

About 10,000 stairs later - I'm back from Huangshan - WOW! This weekend was awesome - we hiked all the way up and back (some of us anyway). We didn't have class on Friday so we took advantage and hopped on a sleeper train to Huangshan Thursday night. My first experience on sleeper was a lot of fun - we played cards until they shut off the lights at 12. After arriving in Tunxi (Huangshan City) we took a small tour bus to the town of Tongku at the base of the mountain. While Tanner (speaks Chinese) was being bombarded by a lady trying to sell a hotel room, Eric and I read our guidebooks and tried to devise a plan for the group. We learned of an English speaking man named Mr Hu who was recommended for his restaurant and his knowledge of the mountain. When I stepped off the bus, I generally asked a group of people standing on the sidewalk "Do you know where Mr. Hu is?"
"I'm Mr. Hu," replied a 5 foot man. Well how about that?! Haha! Mrs. Hu cooked us some French toast at his restaurant while he suggested an itinerary and booked our hotel on the summit. We met some fellow Americans on their way down from the mountain and chatted, then proceeded to the 10 Dragons Waterfalls park. After hiking a few miles through some medium grade steps and waterfalls, Dragon's Heart pool enticed me to jump in. Ahhh. We continued the journey up the mountain and hit the first steep set of stairs. Some groans were heard, but this was just the beginning. When we reached the half way point, some people bought canes to aid. Steps steps steps and more steps... we kept ascending until the other guys were exhausted and stopped at a booth selling water (there are no roads to the summit, so everything on Huangshan has to be carried up on a porter's back). Somehow the guys struck a deal with the two 50 year old women to carry their bags up the rest of the way. $5 dollars a bag is a pretty deal, but I think there's something wrong about the principle of the matter (at least they didn't hire a chair to carry them up). After a series of breaks, I went a little ahead of the group and met some porters who I raced up to the top. Phew, I was tired. We made it to our hotel and were dismayed to find that all the restaurants on the mountain were closed. A rumbling in our stomach told us to give it a shot, so we tried one of the restaurants which was fortunately open. A full stomach and the crisp mountain air put me to sleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.
Saturday morning we woke up to try to catch the acclaimed Huangshan sunrise, but a fierce rainstorm blocked the view, so we went back to bed. Later that morning, we were all still tired from the day before so we spent some time talking with the locals and playing some bball. Most of the people on the mountiain don't come down for 2 years at a time! We hiked around a little and saw some more spectacular views, but I didn't have my camera, darn it Stan.
Sunday morning we tried for the sunrise again to no avail this time because of the heavy fog/clouds. We ate lunch and split the group up in preparation for descent - Eric and I wanted to hike down but the others opted for the 15 minute cable car.

The western steps trail was far more picturesque than our route up on the east side, but it is also much more challenging with chilling, seemingly vertical sets of steps. We passed the famed "Welcoming Pine" - one of the many trees over 1000 years old. The vegetation on the mountain was pretty cool, with many ancient naturally miniature bonzai trees. Eric and I decided to add a short 1.5 km to our journey down to scale Celestial Peak - the highest, best view on the mountain. The stairs started below the clouds and led us up, up, up, and up through them until we could look down on the clouds and the whole mountain. Beforehand I had a lock engraved with Gigi's and my name on it (the vendors had a chuckle when I told them I wanted 'Gigi' engraved - ask her what it means in Chinese - I opted for Brigitte instead (miss you JB ahhh!, I had many Simba moments this weekend if you couldn't tell.) ). I locked our names onto Celestial peak forever.
Eric and I made our way down the mountain which sounds like an easy task, but the extra 1.5 km actually took us 2 hours because we wanted to go slow and not fall to our death - my knees are still killing me.

We rendevouzed with the crew at Mr Hu's and ate another excellent Mrs. Hu meal. We signed our names in the book and departed Tongku for the plane back to Shanghai.

Check out the Huangshan pics here.