Thursday, August 28, 2014

Hua Shan - a very cool mountain

About two hours away from Xi'an is a mountain called Hua Shan.  I think it might be one of the coolest mountains I've ever visited.  After the two hour bus ride, we bought tickets for another bus ride to a cable car, so that we could ride part of the way up.

The view from the bottom of the cable car.

An awesome sign that really makes sense....



A view from the top of the cable car.  We hiked to the top of that peak way in the distance.

We saw this everywhere on the mountain.  Couples will buy a lock and have it engraved with their names and then lock it onto a chain on the mountain.  I think they throw away the key as well.  It's supposed to symbolize their everlasting love for each other.




These signs were on the mountain in a number of locations and were very useful in knowing how far it was to the next location.  The times were drastically underestimated in my opinion (unless you spend hours on a stairclimber on a regular basis maybe).



Lots of stairs on this mountain and some were a little scary.... 



Danger! No Crossing!

Because right behind the sign it drops off a couple of thousand feet....








It's about 1000 steps from this point down to the buildings in the middle of the photo.  I just climbed up those steps and counted....  Wish I could say I was at the top, but I wasn't even close yet....







This part was optional, which was probably a good thing, since a lot of people were having trouble getting up it!











We took a different cable car back down to the bottom.  The cable car came out of a hole in the side of the mountain.  

Looking straight down it was quite a drop!


Views from the ride back down.