Xi’an to HuaShan
From our stay in Xi’an city cental to Huashan (Mount Hua) was a long way, 128km and about 1.5 hour by taxis. We “DiDi” (e-hail) a taxis just at the base of our stay to bring us to Huashan visitor center (华山-游客中心). The taxis cost was ¥360 which when divided amoung three of us was quite affordable for such a long distance.
There were other options to get to Mount Hua besides taxis/cabbing end to end. Fast train G3186 from Xi’An North Station reached HuaShan North Station in 28 minutes which was fast, but we would still have to get to the train station from our stay and at destination we needed to hop onto a free tourist shuttle bus and ride about 40 minutes to Mount Hua Visitor Center. Going by public transport which would be inexpensive would mean a travelling time of at least 3 hours from our stay. It was a good thing that we went by taxis!
Mount Hua Visitor Center
On arriving at the visitor center we found to our horror all entrance tickets to the West Peak was sold out. Only entrance tickets to the North Peak were left. The West Peak (2082m) was higher than the North peak (1615m), so our plan (most recommended) was to cable-car up to the West Peak and hike to up to South, Middle and East Peak and then hike down to North Peak and take the cable car down to the base of North Peak. This would certainly be an easier hike than ascending to the North Peak and hiking up to visit the rest of the peaks.
Mount Hua was so huge, it was unimaginable that a limit to the number of visitors was set. If we had known upfront we would have book our tickets on Trip.com rather than buy them on site. The issued of buying on Trip.com was the date and time range had to be selected which would tie us to a specific date and time.
While we were wondering what to do next, a Chinese woman approached us and offered to help us get entrance ticket to the north peak. She would charge ¥100 more per ticket. After debating we decided to pay her for her help as we really did not think we could do the hiking from the North Peak.
The actual cost of the “entrance ticket + west peak shuttle bus” per person was ¥200. Once we got the tickets we joined a long queue to get into the “gantry gate for the west peak”. After we got past the gantry we joined a even longer queue for tourist shuttle buses that transfer us to the base of the West Peak. It was a 40 minutes bus journey.
Once we reached the base of West peak we had to trek up some steps and queue to buy the cable car ticket to the peak. Our ¥200 ticket per person covered only entrance cost and tourist shuttle bus, cable car rides were not included. There were others (very few) who trekked up to peak but not us. We had no confident to reach the peak on our “legs power”. After we got the cable car tickets we had to walk up more steps to join another super long queue for the cable car ride!
By the time we got into the cable car it was about 3.5 hours since we first start queuing at the entrance gantry of visitor center! Finally the “fun” began! The cable ride was 20 minutes and during this period we had a awesome view of Mount Hua as we went up.
Each cable-car took eight persons, so everybody had a seat and everybody had a good view of the outside scenery. The 20 minute ride in the cable car was amazing, the scenery was stunning, never had we seen such mountain landscape, it was a very exhilarating ride. On the way up our cable car seemed to be scaling one peak after another going up and up, we could feel the walls of the mountain looming close as our “car” “sailed” over them. Wow!
The upper station of the west peak opened out to a courtyard packed with many people. We were not sure where should we moved on to, so we went along with the many people going up a set of steps, wondering if we were moving in the right direction.
Soon we reached a ridge that lead to the summit of the west peak. The walking path on the ridge was wide and could take many people. At both sides of the ridge were metal chains that marked the “off limit” section. Mount Hua was a granite mountain so the ground was very hard and solid not slippery at all.
Mount Hua also known as HuaShan (华山) was considered one of China’s most revered and treacherous sacred mountains. It magnificient peaks had been nickname “Number one steepest mountain under Heaven”. Mount Hua had five distinct peaks (west, south, east, middle and north), each offering its own unique blend of breathtaking beauty and heart stopping terror.
We walked from the West Peak (2082) to the South Peak (2155m) then to the East Peak (2096m). The moving was pretty slow going as there were many people and everyone like us stopped so frequently to snap photos. Mount Hua was just too unbelievably stunning. Besides the five distinct peaks there were many others, some were so sharp and high!
The South Peak at 2155m was the highest peak, and near the south peak was the “dare devil” plank walk. The queue to do the plank walk was long and packed with youngsters and the wait time before one could go onto the plank was at least 2 hours. We were “half hearted” about doing the “plank walk” and the 2 hour wait was pretty discouraging. Then we came to a signboard that stated that all participants must be younger than 50 years old so it was a “no go” for all the three of us!
At about 5.00 pm we thought it was time to get off Mount Hua. We made our way to the cable car station at the North Peak, some 200 metres from the cable car station there was already a long queue. To our horror it was the queue to get onto the cable car. We queued along with hundreds others inching forward very slowly. When we were nearer to the front of the queue, we realised that we were ones of a fews that had no tickets for the cable ride down. Many of the locals had already bought their cable car tickets. So one of us quicky exited the queue to buy the tickets at the ticket counter and returned to the queue.
The cable car ride down from the North Peak was only 8 minutes but the view was equally stunning as the ride up the West Peak. After reaching the lower station we rushed to join another long long queue to board a tourist bus that took us back to the entrance, it was a 20 minutes bus ride. At the entrance car park we met our driver who took another 1.5 hour to tranfer us back to our stay!
The entire Mount Hua trip took 13-14 hours. It was 3 hours for the two way taxis ride between Mount Hua Entrance and our stay, 4 hours to reach West Peak upper station, 3.5 hour hiking the five peaks and 3 hours getting down from the North Peak. July was the summer holiday of China Students which was definitely not the right time to visit any prominent attractions of China!