latitude x longitude: Emeishan

Jeremy & I have a running list of places we want to visit in this part of the world before our time in China is over & Emeishan. Emei (pronounced UH-mey) meaning "delicate eyebrow" & shan, meaning "mountain," was a big one. Essentially, there are two major peaks that face each other & are said to look like "the delicate eyebrows of a Chinese classic beauty." I never actually saw these two eyebrow peaks, but I'll take their word for it. It is said to be one of the three most sacred peaks in all of China & a major Buddhist mountain full of old temples & monasteries. Many have been known to make the trip up for spiritual reasons.

We decided we would make this climb over Jeremy's Christmas break, reaching the top on Christmas Eve. The original plan was to climb the first part of the mountain & stay at a temple or hostel near the top, at a designated major tourist stop where there is a bus drop-off. Our goal was get up about two hours before dawn the morning of Christmas Eve & finish the hike, watching the sunrise at the summit. Unfortunately, climbing the mountain took a bit longer than we had anticipated.

happy faces at the start of our climb.

We started out around 9am on the 23rd. We had asked the hostel worker in the town at the base of the mountain roughly how long it would take for us to climb it. He stated that someone climbing it at a pretty moderate pace would take around 14 hours. He said we could maybe do it in 12 if we really hustled. We both laughed a little under our breath, commenting that "we're much more in shape than the 'average' person hiking this so, we'll definitely make it to our destination by sundown."

We were so wrong.

the mountain in this photo is not Mt. Emei. (I thought it was. Wrong again.)

Our trek began & we started to make our way up, what I thought, was Emei itself. What it turned out to be was just a baby foothill mountain that would open us up to a very vast expanse of mountains that break into Tibet.

We summited the first foothill in an hour & started to make our way back down. I realized that we weren't even on Emei itself & then we came across a glorious lookout -- at which point we realized how far we had to go, with maybe 8 hours of good sunlight remaining.

We kept our spirits high as the elevation continued to change & we summited a few more foothills. There was a lot of ascending & descending during this time of the day. We made it to the another giant temple, where we realized that we had finally arrived at the base of Emei. We had 7 hours of sunlight to go.

temple on Emei & fellow mountain climber.

one of my favorite spots on the mountain.

We were at the base of Emei for a while, navigating around a river & along the edge of what becomes a large group of wild monkey's favorite place to hang out. I would have taken many more photos at this point if it weren't for the fact that we were actively being chased by the "sometimes aggressive" monkeys & I was petrified of being jumped on. I watched a group of Chinese tourists get pounced on by these monkeys & their pockets gone through, trying to find food. I put my hood up & hid behind Jeremy, who they had a particular affinity for. I guess they aren't used to tall people? Either way, they loved him & I was worried he was going to get attacked. Fun stuff.

the only real picture we got of the monkeys before a heard of them started to circle around us.

It took us 30 minutes to finally move past the monkeys, as a very large one in particular kept blocking the path, refusing to let us through.

We really had to make up this lost time, as it was already 2pm & we had a really long way to go.

We spent much of the next two hours walking up the steepest stairs I'd ever climbed (up to this point.) Stopping to take breaks for breath & to gaze out at the magnificent view.

Two major things I noticed:

1. We were the only one's climbing at this point. All the tourists seemed to remain near the major temple at the base of Emei (where there just so happened to be a major bus stop) & just venture down to see the monkey before heading back. So we were all alone for hours, not seeing another soul until we stopped for a late lunch, after which we didn't see another person for about 2 hours after that. It was strange. The first time being completely alone while out in China.

2. It was so quiet on the mountain. Like, eerily quiet. We would stop trudging up the steps & aside from our rapidly beating hearts, you could have heard a pin drop. It really put into perspective how small & insignificant you are when you are surrounded by giant mountains as far as you can see.

We could see the sunlight reflecting off the opposite mountains, and shadows started to lengthen. We checked our map & asked the one person we had come in contact with for hours how much further until our next check-point, "Another hour..." they would tell us.

The air started to get thinner & colder as we continued our ascent. I felt like we had climbed the height of the mountain at least three times at this point, when I started to notice patches of snow on the ground.

We had made it to our next check point, but when we asked how much further until our next checkpoint, they told us two more hours. The sunlight was fading fast & I was not willing to be hiking for any extended period of time in the dark with our tiny little flashlights to guide us. Not to mention, we were very alone & it was very cold. I knew we had to make it to shelter before it got dark.

We really pushed on, trying our hardest to take shorter breaks & focus on getting to our check-point. Jeremy, the kind, wonderful soul, who had offered to carry our backpack the duration of the trip, was really starting to fade, and I was starting to worry we were gonna have to sleep on the trail. (Not an option.)

The path was getting crazy icy & very hard to navigate. We thankfully had bought some spikes for our shoes while we were in town so we strapped them on & continued down into another valley. I would get so frustrated every time we would start to descend. "I want to go up! Not down!" Every time we had made it to a very high point, we would almost immediately be brought back down - making a very large circle around Emei & back and forth between a few other mountains along the way.

Night was falling fast. The path lead us along very, very steep cliffs where I worried our conversation would disturb the ice & snow above and cause a major landslide. We lowered our voices to a whisper & continued on our way.

Still over an hour away from what we thought would be our stopping point for the night (& no where near the bus depot a mere two hour hike to the top,) we started to get really tired. I was mentally panicking & I knew we needed to find a place to stay for the night, and soon.

We trudged up the steepest most challenging set of steps thus far, up to the top of a little mountain overlook. From a distance, it looked like an abandoned old building. Upon arriving, (and after about 5 minutes of regaining our breath,) we realized it was an old temple.

Jeremy converses with the family that kept up the monastary. There were rooms that could be rented for the night. Jeremy wanted to press on to our original destination, where he was hoping for something a bit nicer for us to crash at for the night. I told him that it was almost dark & that was at least another hour's climb from here. We knew we weren't going to make the summit before sunrise. We needed to call it a day.

The monastary fed us a very simple dinner of bok choy & some

other unidentifiable vegetable with rice. We got our key to our room. It was a tiny, concrete space with two twin beds & no heat. The beds had heating pads & two quilts each. We piled all our blankets on to one twin bed, turned the heating pad on, spread our (now very wet) clothes on the opposite bed & tried to get some rest. It was maybe 8pm when we went to bed.

I laid there, reading my book to distract me from the space we were sleeping it. It was by far the craziest place I had every slept. I didn't actually get much sleep (sharing a twin size bed will do that.) although we were plenty warm. My biggest fear was that our clothes wouldn't be dry by morning. We slept with a lot of clothing on, hoping that our body heat would dry them out some. That worked for almost everything.

We had our alarm set for 6am, eager to get back on the trail to make it to the summit by hopefully mid afternoon. As soon as we saw first light, we packed our gear, ate some peanut butter & apples we had packed and set out on the icy trail once more...

the morning view from the monastery.

the only other guest besides us.

The sky was very overcast. I felt like there was no way it would get any clearer by the time we got to the top. We both talked about our options - about how we needed to be back in the town at the bottom of the mountain by sundown because we needed to be back in Chengdu for Christmas. We wondered if the summit would be all that impressive considering the extensive fog & grey skies looming overhead. Or if we would even get to the summit before nightfall.

Trudging on, I felt like the wind had been sucked out of my sails. I definitely was feeling the exhaustion of the hike from the day before & the lack of sleep I got. I was really struggling to make much headway. Jeremy lead us most of the morning.

About an hour after we had set out, we came to the original spot Jer wanted to stop at the night before. It was deserted. A small area with maybe three buildings, all boarded up & not a soul to be found. Thankfulness washed over me in the fact that we found the monastery when we did.

Another hour later, we made it to the (frozen) Elephant wading pool, another major check-point. It was also a giant breeding ground full of monkeys, however these guys were a little less aggressive & much more preoccupied with huddling together to stay warm.

This is where another moment hit me. As we started to make our way up (more) steps leading to a small rest-point, I noticed another couple hiking. Except one of the people was working their way up the mountain on one leg. He was hobbling up the steps on a crutch & his girlfriend was carrying a very large pack that you could tell she was really struggling with. But, they were making their way up & I felt so pathetic for ever complaining once about how tired I was.

I also really wanted to high-five them.

With that reminder that I had two working legs, we continued up even steeper hills. Steps that went on as far up as you could see lay before us. All covered with ice & snow. We asked the rest-point person who was selling water how far to the next check-point (the original stopping point for last night, the two hours from the summit stopping point.) & he said another 2 hours.

So, up we did climb.

We came across some tourists who were making their way down the mountain. They told us the summit was super overcast & not worth going up for. They also said we had about 45 minutes left until the next check-point (which was a major drop off point for the buses that go up & down the mountain.) So, we had much deciding to do.

We had already come up such a long way to just take a bus back down. We wanted to make the summit. When we got to the bus stop & next major check-point, we saw that the hiking path to the summit was closed due to heavy cloud coverage making it impossible to see anything. So, our only other option was to take a cable car up through the clouds & hope that the summit would have clear skies.

The cable car took about five minutes, during which time we rode through a blanket of clouds so thick you could see nothing outside the windows but white. It was a little unnerving knowing we were hanging off the edge of a giant mountain by a wire cable, with no ability to see anything below or above us.

Then, slowly, the sun started to break through the clouds. As we continued up, the thick fog started to dissipate & we could see a bright blue sky awaited us.

We were so happy to have pressed on to the top. Even though we made it after sunrise, we still made it & the feeling of standing on the top of that 10,000 foot mountain after 14 hours of hiking felt amazing.