Last weekend a group of 6 of us decided to go to Emei Shan. I did not plan on going until I got a call Friday morning at 11 asking if I wanted to go. They said they were leaving around 3 and I thought it sounded like fun. I really didn't know what Emei Shan was but I figured it'd be a fun weekend trip with some hiking. We took a bus from Chengdu and it took about 2 and a half hours to get there. Friday night we slept in a hostel at the base of the mountain and then Saturday morning we got up early and started hiking. I looked up the weather before we left and it said the high was 28 degrees F and the low was 15 so I packed a lot of warm clothes. I was kind of nervous because it's been in the 50's in Chengdu and I've never been so cold! There is no heating inside south of the Yangtze River in China so it's freezing inside. It's literally colder inside than it is outside which is absurd to me. I am always bundled up, especially inside my apartment. Anyway, I was pretty scared for this cold weather so I bundled up a lot. We started hiking and we walked for about 30 minutes upstairs and then found out we went the wrong way. I was kind of mad because it was difficult to walk straight upstairs for 30 mins. Anyway after that I was pretty warm so I took off a bunch of layers of clothes and we continued on. There were more stairs and I just hoped they would end soon. After a few hours we reached the monkeys! The monkeys jumped all over everyone. It was kind of cool but they warned us to be careful because they steal things. It turns out they were right because a monkey stole Kolby's gatorade. I was turned around and the next thing I know a monkey had jumped on my head and then jumped from me to Jason and then it disappeared. I got some pretty good pictures with monkeys though so I was excited. We kept hiking after the monkeys for a little while and then we found a small little outdoor restaurant and we decided to stop and eat lunch. After lunch, the hike was brutal. It was literally all stairs!! I kept thinking at some point the hike has to level out a little but after a few more hours I realized that was never going to happen. I kind of wanted to cry because I was overwhelmed with all the stairs. Around 5 pm, after a full day of hiking nothing but stairs, we came across a Buddhist monastery. We asked them how much longer it would take to get to the next monastery and they said around 2 hours. The sun sets around 6 and there was no way we were going to get there before the sun set. My legs were literally shaking from all the stairs and there was no way I could keep going for another 2 hours so we decided to spend the night at this monastery. We ate dinner there and were asleep by 8 pm. We were exhausted. The monastery was above the clouds if that tells you anything about how many stairs we climbed.
The next morning, we got up early to start hiking again. Fortunately, Kolby said he didn't need to go to the summit and he'd be happy to catch a bus back down with me once we got to the bus stop. I gladly agreed because I was so over hiking stairs at this point. It was about another 4 hours to the bus stop though. Of course, it was also all upstairs. We were so high up that it started to snow! It snowed a lot and it was beautiful! We made it to the bus stop around 1pm and the group planned to split up and some of us go back and some go to the top. Once we reached the bus stop though it was so unbelievably cold that nobody wanted to keep hiking so the whole group took a bus down. It was about 3 or 4 more hours to the top but you could take a cable car if you wanted and it would cut off about an hour and a half of hiking. I found out most people just take a bus to this point and then hike up. It was really foggy/cloudy though so we figured even if we got to the top, we wouldn't be able to see anything. It was a fun weekend though, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into with all the stairs. It was worth it to see monkeys and snow though!
This is the Buddhist monastery we stayed at for the night.
the group
