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Tai Shan: Capturing “The Look”

Posted on November 8, 2012 by strippedpixel / No comments

Maybe it didn’t actually seem as bad as those passing faces would suggest. Maybe, like child birth (or so they say), you forget about the pain and the hours of struggle once it’s over, and eventually look forward to doing it all over again. But as well as the nagging sense of disbelief at your own recent achievement, there’s also always just a twinge – just a tiny little crumb of an impulse – to stand on the steps as the crawlers crawl by, and, for want of less heartless phrase, laugh in their sweaty red faces. On my way down from Tai Shan, that’s essentially what I did.

Sunrise on Tai Shan

Posted on November 7, 2012 by strippedpixel / No comments

7000 steps and over five hours climbing. It had rained almost all the way up until we’d climbed too high for it to rain any more. For the rest of the way to the summit we were passing through a whiteout that still hadn’t shifted by the time I went to bed. It didn’t look good for the sunrise. But you pay you money and take your chance. And if you can see no further than your outstretched hand on the only day you’ve got to go up there, you’d better be praying to everything you can on your way to the top for a clear sky in the morning. I’d set my alarm for 04:15. Sunrise was at 05:20.

7000 steps to the top of Tai Shan

Posted on November 5, 2012 by strippedpixel / No comments

When it comes to mountains, they don’t come any grander or any more renowned in China, than Tai Shan. It is neither the tallest nor the most spectacular of China’s famous peaks, but having been visited by anyone who was ever anyone in Chinese history – from the first emperor Qin Shi Huang to Confucius and Mao Zedong – the mountain today, like Tiananmen Square in Beijing, is a place of pilgrimage for the Chinese people, a chance to connect with thousands of years of Chinese history and tread the same steps as those nation builders that came before them.

Tiger Leaping Gorge: In the shadow of the Snow Mountain

Posted on April 27, 2011 by strippedpixel / No comments

With the Haba Mountains to the west, Jade Dragon Snow Mountain to the east, and the waters of the Yangtze River thundering over boulders almost 4000m below, Tiger Leaping Gorge is one of China’s most spectacular treks and a unanimous must-do on any visit to Yunnan.

At around 15km in length and arguably the world’s deepest, the gorge has long been a staple of adventurous Yunnan travel. Its sheer slopes, striking peaks, waterfalls, forests, drowsy hamlets and local Naxi farmers with their donkeys or goat herds passing along the way, all combine to make a Tiger Leaping Gorge trek one which most visitors would be hard pushed to find better in the whole of China.

Emei Shan: Snow, monkeys and broken ribs

Posted on January 11, 2011 by strippedpixel / 2 comment

At 3099m, Emei Shan is comfortably the tallest of China’s Four Sacred Mountains of Buddhism and is traditionally seen as the place of enlightenment of the bodhisattva Samantabhadra to whom many of the mountain’s temples and monuments are dedicated.

I arrived in the town of Baoguo at the foot of the mountain the night before my climb and stayed in one of the recommended hostels there. The following morning, after a breakfast that straddled the border between a hearty attempt at sustenance and sheer, ill-conceived gluttony, I set off.