Hua Shan (Mountain)

On Sunday, we went to Hua Shan to take in the beauty of China's mountains.
This is the highest peak that will be easily accessible to us while we are in China so we were pretty excited. We booked what I thought was a transport only tour to the mountain. Turns out we were in a Chinese tour bus and had some stops that we didn't really plan for.

We packed for cold weather, knowing that it might get chilly up the mountain.

The first thing I noticed on the road was that the country side near Xi'an looks about the same as the developing countries I've visited south of the United States such as Mexico or Cuba.
We stopped en route to the mountain to this supplier of last resort, selling foods, drinks and gear for those that came ill equipped to tackle the mountain.

Then, we learned (through lots of confusion) that we were stopping at a temple before reaching the mountain where a chinese tour guide would explain all the inns and outs of the temple. We visited on our own.
Next up was a quick lunch in a restaurant off the highway before reaching our desired destination: Hua Shan (Shan means mountain!)
Wow. What a beautiful mountain
We took a mini bus and then a cable car to a point about 200m from the peak
And then proceeded making our way through the paths that were sometimes quite vertical
I wouldn't go up (or down which was actually the most unpleasant) this path again, especially knowing there is an alternative path!

We reached as high as we were willing to go (it looked a bit dangerous and there were way too many people going to the highest west peak). Quite a few really interesting sights!

Some people left locks to leave a mark on the mountain I guess

And there's even a hotel all the way up there, not for people with too much luggage!
We still managed to get to the North Peak and get some really decent views.

We got down the mountain a bit early for the meetup point with the bus so we shopped around a bit and found some really decent deals (or so we think!) in the shops near the bottom of the mountain.

Being a true geek, I brought my garmin GPS with me to check out the elevation. Look at this graph!
I was surprised by how accurate the GPS was when I saw this sign and compared to what the watch was telling me...

Once we got back to town after a 3 hour bus ride, we found out that the weather had dropped!!! It was cold in Xi'an. We warmed up by going for a delicious bowl of noodles!