Sacred Mountain Huashan

According to the Taoist tradition, there are 5 sacred mountains in China, which we suspect were chosen for their extreme beauty. Pilgrims and curious people come in flocks to climb them.
G had already climbed TaiShan (key mountain to the other religions as well) on a weekend trip from Beijing. Every important person in Chinese history seems to have taken the 6000+ steps up, from Confucious to the first emperor. It is said that by climbing this one all your bad actions will be restored, an important reward after the equally serious workout.

In a unusually clear day of October we have climbed a second holy mountain, HuaShan. This mountain consists of 4 holy peaks, named after the cardinal points. Most people take a cable car from the bottom to the first peak, but we got up early and did all the way up using our legs. G managed to visit all the four peaks but Anna had to stop at a certain point: The height was breathtaking, see pictures below.

Rest was needed from time to time during the climb. It was not difficult to stay on the right track, the red stripes and padlocks (not to mention the people) showed it clearly.

Stairs were in big numbers. All these steps did not go unnoticed by our legs, which kept reminding us of the beautiful hike for a couple of days with pain appearing whenever going up or down (mainly down) some stairs.  

 

Here we had just made it up to the north peak.

Steep wall beside the track

The climb from the north peak to the east peak was only possible on a ridge with a 90 degree wall on each side reaching very deep down in the valley. These supporting words came along...

Time for Anna to go back, climbing the ridge was just too much.