Huashan

Originally it was our plan to climb up and down Huashan in one day and move on to Luoyang, but as our day of departure to Xi'an neared, we decided to stay on top of Huashan for a night just for fun. We set off for Huashan expecting an easy three hour walk up to the north peak where we planned on dropping our stuff and heading up to the west peak. My Lonely Planet book had been pretty accurate for most of the trip and we decided to do take the longer way up, the three hour walk, instead of the cable car. We got off the train in Huashan and were immediately bombarded by a bunch of guys who tried to make us get in their car and go to the base of Huashan. They said the bus was nine RMB per person and was very slow. But after about five minutes of arguing with these guys, who couldn't speak very good Mandarin, we decided to opt for the public bus (not that we were going to take the sketchy guys' cars anyway). As it turns out the bus was only three RMB and took us to a very close stop next to the base of the mountain. The way to the base was through an old temple and up a small hill which was very scenic but unnecessarily large. After going through the main gate we were making good time. However, after five minutes we all decided to stop and eat because we hadn't had lunch yet and it was already noon. After an excessively long lunch break we proceed up the mountain and start encountering some fairy steep inclines. My two friends with me were looking warily at the inclines and decided to take another break after 20 minutes. By this point we had maybe moved 400 meters and had at least 90 percent of the mountain to climb. To cut a long story short, we ended up at the top of the mountain at 4:30 and incredibly tired from the near vertical inclines we had to go up. We all dropped our heavy bags in the room and just sat there thinking we were crazy to be bringing such big backpacks up such a tall mountain. After half an hour's rest, one of my friends and I decided to go up the rest of the way to the west peak. This part of the hike was much better because we didn't have any backpacks to worry about and the sun was going down so we were not being burned anymore. When we got back to the room it was dark and there were hardly any light on in the "hotel" which had no running water and really dirty sheets. The next day we got up at 7 to catch a train at 10. We took the cable car down this time which wasn't cheap (72 RMB which could maybe buy two days' meals). Once we got down the mountain we then needed to take another bus (10 RMB) to another stop where we had to take a 30 RMB taxi to the train station. At the train station we were glad to be done with our Huashan experience and were ready for our next stop, Luoyang.