Day: 249

Not really waking up, so much as deciding to stand up and shiver instead of lying down; my alarm on my new $20 Casio watch told us it was almost sunrise. Sophie and I wandered up to the summit hoping to find one or both of our friends, only to find instead a plethora of Chinese -Who I could only assume took the gondola up most of the way up to the North Peak- seeing how they were far underdressed for overnight hiking and undershoed for the insanity that was the path to the top.

Now, have you ever noticed that sometimes I start off writing about day, then the story seems to disintegrate? Well this looks like one of those days, but I will explain how it happens. I started writing the beginning yesterday, and now today with my daily blog deadline approaching and new friends asking me to go hike the city walls, I can’t really maintain the dedication to the story to tell it all right now.

Needless to say, I have uploaded a shitload of pictures so you can have a slight idea of how intense this trail was on our way down. Pretty much, imagine 5 miles of stairs that have a 6000ft elevation gain. Now imagine doing it in the dark with a little LED flashlight, and waking up to find yourself on top of a mountain.

The rest of the day was spent cleaning up in our hotel, busing back to Xi’an, getting back to the same hostel again, going to the fountain water show (at which, this girl wanted her picture taken with me), and (of course) drinking beer.

Day: 248

After spending so many days in Xi’an I needed to get away. Something natural, possibly some exercise mixed in. Shuffling though the pages of my Lonely Planet I found Hua’ Shan, a mountain with a supposed amazing hike only two hours away. I basically just spoke up last night at the hostel bar and I had three people coming with me.

The thing about Hua Shan is that the hike is best when done at night to watch the sunrise over the 2100meter (6930ft) Eastern Peak. You are supposed to leave around 10pm to make it by 5am sunrise. No big deal, we all caught a bus to Hua Shan Village (around 900ft), got a cheap hotel room and slept the afternoon away.

Now, the LP called this hike as “fairly strenuous” but with all the Chinese walking through town in sandals I wasn’t overly concerned. We all set off at 9:30pm. Within a kilometer we felt our calves burning, and we had lost Adi to another group, within a couple more Luke fell back. At 4 kilometers, the stairs started their 60 degree accent with a chain mounted to the granite, and went on for 2 kilometers. Basically strait up, like every bad Chinese kung fu movie you have ever seen.

Sophie, my new Australian hiking buddy, and I made the North Peak and came to the consensus that this is easily the most difficult trek either of us had been on. At least we both had kept the ground eating pace to this point. We continued over the narrow trail by flashlight, knowing we were barely hugging a shear granite drop but unable to see how far it plummeted.

2 kilometers later we summited the cold windblown East Peak. It was 2:15am and we had every scrap of clothing we carried up with us on, and it was still cold. My sleeping bag was still in the hotel. We wandered back down the hill about 50 feet and found a nice sheltered patch of ground to get a couple hours of sleep.

Within minutes the cold decided, that this night would be a very friendly one. We ended up spending the next three hours huddled next to each other, spooning to keep warm.

Not bad for just meeting a girl.

(Seeing how this was all at night, and complete darkness isn’t really conducive with quality photography; we’ll just call this part one.)