Yellow Mountain

For David's Birthday we spent a long weekend visiting Yellow Mountain.  I organised the trip independently, using our own car and driver to get us there.  For a few days away, it took a fair amount of planning because there isn't a lot of English-language information available.  However, I figured it out in the end and we had a great time.  Yellow Mountain is incredibly beautiful.

Sorry about the amount of pictures that follow.  We have far more than this :)  Believe it or not this is the condensed version..

Some views as we headed up the mountain via the Taiping Cableway.  This is the longest cablecar system in Asia.  

On the first evening we hiked our to a spot where we could watch the sunset.   It was beautiful.

The girls got a little bored of watching the sunset, so I took them for a hike further along the trail.  There are some pretty steep stairs in places.  There are also areas with very low railings and other areas where the walkway hangs off the side of the mountain.  We didn't do a lot of these trails because none of us enjoyed having to stress about Clara's whereabouts constantly.  If you want to see a trail that we dared not hike, google 'carp's back yellow mountain'.

This picture is taken further along the trail of the original place we were standing to watch the sunset.  It might be hard to see, but there is just a thigh-high chain-link fence preventing people from falling down that cliff.

There are locks on various paths around the mountain.  They are called 'lovers locks'.  Couples attach the locks to the chain and then throw the key over the side.  This is supposed to mean that their love will be eternal.

These pictures were taken at sunrise the next morning.  The girls were trying to get a little more sleep by lying on my leg.

This is Ethan and one of his best friends from school.  His family visited Yellow Mountain at the same time as us.

The sunrise wasn't quite as impressive as the sunset.  It was a cloudier day.

Ethan and his friend and his friend's little brother.  The little brother is in the same grade as Erica.  Their family is Singaporean.

Erica and I went off on a mother-daughter hike to try to reach a particular part of the mountain.  It was fun to get to hang out just the two of us.

This is how everything is transported up and down the mountain.  All of the sheets, towels, supplies etc from the hotels are carried.  That there is real hard work.

Still on my hike with Erica.  We were trying to reach the rock that is sticking up in the distance.  It is called flying-over rock.  It was a pretty steep hike.  At this point I suggested to Erica that just seeing it was ok, but she insisted that we keep going.

Almost there.

Views from the flying-over rock.  It was worth the steep hike.

Across from the flying-over rock we could see one of the paths that are built straight onto the side of the mountain.  The railings are not very high.  You don't want to trip on that path.   If you want to see an extremely scary path google 'huashan plank trail'.  That is a mountain in Xi'An.  Wow!

Erica and Flying-Over Rock

After Erica and I did our hike, we returned to the hotel.  We all (the whole family) packed our bags and then did a further hike to another part of the mountain, before we could make our way back down.  At the start of our hike we passed a man carrying vegetables to our hotel.  We all commented that now we felt guilty for eating vegetables.  Erica responded "I don't feel guilty because I haven't eaten any vegetables!"  ha!

Monkey Rock (the small rock that looks like a monkey looking into the distance)

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Erica was very brave.  She doesn't seem to have many problems with heights.  On the other side of that railing was a deep drop down the side of the mountain.  Additionally, getting to the corner was not easy because many of the viewing platforms consist of the natural rock contours (sometimes with a railing, sometimes not).  

Clara was extremely good with all of the walking.  Our biggest problem was that she didn't seem to have much appreciation for the dangers around her.  She wanted to run around as usual, making the rest of us panic.  She also had a couple of tantrums when we occasionally wouldn't let her climb to the same places as the older two children.  However, overall she was great and rarely needed carrying.  She just kept on going.

It looked like something out of Lord of the Rings.

I brought one walking stick with me, that I thought I could bring out whenever one of the kids started to get tired.  I should have brought three.  All of the kids loved the walking stick and we had to keep rotating.

This is the hotel we stayed at overnight.  It was quite nice (but also quite expensive).  There are five or six hotels on the mountain.  I have no idea how they built these given everything has to be carried up and down the mountain.

A beautiful tree at the base of the mountain.