The Biggest Under-Estimation of My Life

I realize that I'm quite late with getting this out. It's been just almost three weeks since this great adventure, and I'm just now getting around to writing about it. We just had an exam Tuesday in Thermodynamics II over the things we learned in Thermodynamics I. With an exam so suddenly, priorities shifted and writing this got put off until the second half of this week. The whole adventure was quite extraordinary, so I'll try not to leave anything out. This will be another long post, but hopefully even more exciting than the last one. 

Hopefully I can relate to you how accurate the title of this blog post is. A man I respect very much likes to say, "Wisdom is just knowledge with a bunch of mistakes attached to it." I guess that means I became wiser due to this adventure.

If you need a refresher, I was currently in Chengdu city in Sichuan province with Cai and Tom, we had climbed a small mountain, walked around towns, and seen some pandas. That all lasted us from Thursday to Saturday night.

Sunday morning, we got up, packed our things, jumped in a cab right outside the hostel and jumped out at the train station. This day was going to be the highlight of our trip to the Sichuan Valley. Our plan was to climb Emei mountain on Sunday, and then spend Monday morning in Emeishan, possibly going to the hot springs. Our train pulled into Emeishan Station at around 8:45. For the second time, we wandered around for a while trying to find our hotel. Thankfully, a kind gentleman helped us out by calling the hotel and getting verbal directions, since the written ones were inaccurate. When we finally found it, we checked in and dropped off our bags. We each had a drawstring bag that we put a water bottle in and took off. This was a little after 11:30 am. On our way to the foot of the mountain, we picked up some handy bamboo walking sticks.

We started our climb and soon came upon a trail directory, where we learned that it was a 54 km hike to the peak of the mountain. That's roughly 33.5 miles. I might add here that this was the first solid bit of information we gained about this mountain. We didn't know the peak elevation, the average time to walk to the top, anything. Looking at the distance, we decided to just start walking and see where we were at around 4:00 pm and decide if we should go on then or turn back.

The walk was really nice. There was greenery all around us, and I was climbing a mountain. I love mountains, so I was really excited for the views. Our first clue that we underestimated the hike was the sheer number of stairs. This wasn't like climbing a mountain in the States where you're winding up the mountain on a rough trail. This was stairs on stairs going up and up and up. It wasn't completely stairs. there were places where it leveled out for a little, but for the most part, if we were increasing in elevation, it was due to a step.

As we climbed, there were many places where people were selling food and drinks. At pretty much any place, you could find snickers, dove chocolate, Propel, water, corn on the cob, sausage on a stick, and fruit. There were other things as well, but these particular things were everywhere. Every once in a while, there would also be a hut selling souvenirs.

As we climbed higher, the views only got better. We were soon high enough to be able to look down into valleys and gorges, each a lovely green. The weather couldn't have been better. Climbing all those stairs gets your heart rate up, and going down to just a T-shirt was perfect.

At first, I didn't take many pictures, knowing that I would get some so much better higher up. Now, I wish I had taken more, as it's hard to get an accurate timeline in my head from going back through the pictures. The first water we came upon was rushing over a lot of rocks, and so sounded like a waterfall when coming up on it. That made me pretty excited, as I love waterfalls, but alas, it was not. It was still pretty though, so I wasn't that disappointed.

About mid afternoon, we came upon our first monkeys! This was one of our main goals of the mountain climb. I, personally, was more excited for the view at the peak (I was always shooting for that goal), but that doesn't mean I didn't want to see monkeys. We were all hoping to get some pictures while holding monkeys, Cai especially. This area with monkeys was fairly low on the mountain, so there were a plethora of people. The numerous monkeys were completely unafraid of people and would climb onto anyone who held their arm out.

This monkey lunged into the crowd and grabbed a man's Gatorade bottle. He then proceeded to open the bottle by biting the cap and spinning the bottle with his hands and then started chugging. During this encounter with the monkeys, both Cai and Tom were fortunate enough to have a monkey climb on them, but I was not subject to such enjoyments.
 

 









We even saw some monkeys jump from above the crowd onto peoples' head or shoulders. It seemed that the majority of the people there were scared of the monkeys. I have never been in a similar situation in the States, so I don't know how the reaction of Americans would be to having monkeys climb all over them. Some were more aggressive, some were more timid, but they were all intrigued and curious. You had to be careful to watch your things, or a monkey just might steal it.

After the monkey episode, we picked up our speed again and resumed pushing hard to the peak. Thankfully, the pathway was more level for a while. Looking back, we could see a pretty great view. It was so nice to spend some time in nature after being in the city for so long. I don't mind the city, but I need to have nature breaks every once in a while to keep my sanity.

 

Later on in the day we ran across more monkeys! This time, it was just the three of us, rather than a large mass of people. During the encounter, I was so close to getting a monkey to climb on me, but there was a big one in this bunch that was really aggressive and territorial. He really didn't like it when any of the smaller monkeys got any sort of attention from us. He even jumped on one and bit its neck, telling it to back off. All the other monkeys were scared of him, so they would shy away from us if they saw him coming.

The views continued to get better and better. Around 3:45 it started snowing very lightly, but we were still fairly warm with all the stairs to climb. There were so many stairs. I'm a person who takes stairs two at a time regularly. It got to the point that if I tried to take two, my legs would burn so fiercely that I could physically not do it. At one point in the climb, I couldn't even take one at a time without a rest. It didn't help that the stairs were not uniform. Some sections were a gradual climb, others felt more like a ladder. After four hours of that, your legs get to being tired.

For a third time, we came upon monkeys. This time, I was successful! There's something pretty cool about having a monkey climb on you. It was just the three of us again, and we had the monkeys all to ourselves. They are the coolest, friendliest creatures. They were always looking for food in our hands. If we made a fist and held it where a monkey could see it, he would believe there was peanuts in there and work his way to that fist.

Soon after the third monkey encounter, we started seeing the snow accumulate on the ground, and the steps started to get slippery. At this point, we deduced we weren't that far from the top. The map was difficult to use to get a good estimate because it wasn't a directly overhead view, but that's what we were thinking. We soon found out that we were actually quite a long way from the top. We were only a little over halfway.

This was about the time that the gravity of our underestimation really started to sink in. We found out from other hikers that there were hotels at the top of the mountain. Looking at how far we had come and how far we had to go, a decision had to be made on what to do. I was of the opinion that it was safer to continue up and find a place to stay at the top of the mountain than risk climbing down the mountain in the dark. This opinion was probably also driven by the fact that I really wanted to get to the peak, to actually accomplish it, but especially for the view.

It was about this time that I brought to all of our attention the fact that we didn't have our passports with us. You need those things to stay anywhere overnight. So what would we do? We also didn't have anything else with us other than the clothes we were wearing, and it was getting fairly cold. After discussion, we decided to press on and try to make the peak by the end of the day and try to find a place to stay the night. Fortunately, we had brought a decent amount of cash with us, so that wasn't a worry.

Soon after our final decision that, yes, we were shooting for the peak by the end of that day, we met up with two girls who were also trying to get to the peak that day. One of them, Qing Qing, knew a small amount of English and with Cai's limited Mandarin knowledge, we were able to communicate. The other girl, Ding Ding, didn't know any English, but determination translates across languages.

Our small party of five plodded on as the steps became more covered in snow and as the temperature slowly dropped. We came upon this really beautiful waterfall. There was a thin layer of freshly fallen snow everywhere plus icicles on the waterfall. The whole scene was absolutely gorgeous!

It was here or somewhere soon after that Cai lost his glasses. He had taken them off for a picture and then later when he went to put them back on, they were gone.

After awhile, we came up to a temple (there were temples scattered all over the mountain) where we had the option of spending the night. We were told that it was another two hours to the next place to sleep. At this point, it was 6:30, and we knew it would get dark soon. But we also had to remember that we had a train to catch the next afternoon, so the further we went that night, the less chance there was of missing the train.

There were two guys that were there, trying to make the same decision. We all decided to press on and keep going to the next place. There's a Chinese saying, "Jia you," which literally means "add oil" but is used as a way to say "press on" or "you can do it." That phrase was passed around between us as our tired party of seven climbed more stairs. (Have I mentioned yet that there were a lot of stairs?)


Now, the stairs were in some places completely covered in icy snow. There were small indentations where others had gone. If it wasn't for those, we might not have made it. The sun had set and the sky was growing darker. We came upon a hut where an elderly couple told us that the place we were going to would not have food for us this late, so we stopped and ate some rice and noodles before going on. This was the first meal Cai, Tom, or I had eaten since breakfast. I don't think a bowl of rice has ever tasted so good.

We finished up and made the final trek to our destination. We arrived at around 8:00, so we cut the two hours down a little, which was really nice. Our dwelling for the night was a Buddhist temple. I can now say I've slept in a temple, so that's cool.

We didn't know what would happen considering we didn't have our passports. Tom and Cai had copies on their phones, and I had one in an email, but without internet, I couldn't download it. Thankfully, Qing Qing did all of the talking and took care of everything. She was the only one who had to show ID and got us all a room with exactly seven beds. God definitely provided for us. We worked out what time we would start out again in the morning and then pretty much went right to bed. Our room was not heated, but each bed had an electric blanket pad and two heavy comforters, so I wasn't cold during the night. Somehow, in the room, I got some signal and so was able to chat with my family on WhatsApp and give them a brief update on my crazy adventure.

The next morning, we got up at 6am and bought some breakfast from the temple. When we started out at 6:45, the sky was a faint grey and the white snow was glistening in the low light.

As the light slowly increased, we were able to discover the incredible beauty of the scene around us. It was a winter wonderland like I've never seen before. There's something about being up on a mountain and walking through trees that are covered in a crystallized ice-snow magnificence that just makes you appreciate God's wonderful creativity.

That morning, the views were absolutely stunning! We were the only ones on the trail, the morning was calm and peaceful, and we could see for miles. I'm just going to place some pictures here and let you appreciate them, knowing that these don't come anywhere close to doing the scene justice.

 

At 8:22 we caught sight of the peak, and what a wonderful sight it was! The picture right above this text was the view at that time. Soon after, we came upon an area where buses were unloading the masses. They were the less dedicated people who had been brought up from the bottom by bus and were going to "brave" the hour and a half hike to the top. The peaceful morning was shattered and now we stopped pausing to enjoy the views but simply wanted to get past all the people and to the top. The three of us Americans pushed hard and this was where we lost all our Chinese friends. With the peak in such close grasp, we drove on even harder.

We made it! We reached the peak at about 10:15 am. After 11 hours of walking up stairs, we finally made it to the top! Now one thing about the Chinese: they know how to do a mountain top. This thing was massive! It stands over 150ft tall and weighs 66 tons.

The views from that mountain top were worth everything. The cold. The stairs. The hunger. The burn in my calves. All of it seemed like nothing once we got to the top. (Well, maybe not 'nothing' but it was definitely worth the pain and effort.) I'm going to again just put a lot of pictures here and let you admire them. Remember, the pictures are about 10% of what the view actually was. Also, I realize that the work to get there made the scene so much greater, so you don't have that either. But still, the pictures are pretty incredible.

And here is my personal favorite. I made this my Facebook cover photo, so you might have seen it already. I love how you can see the clouds above and the clouds below, with a few smaller peaks pushing their way through the wispy mist below.

To get down the mountain, we walked for a short bit to the cable car station which took us further down to the bus station. We then took a bus back to the bottom of the mountain. We got back to our unused hotel at 1:00 and asked the front desk if we could have one more hour before checking out. The lady agreed, so we rushed upstairs, each of us hopped through the shower, we packed, and checked out.

We then went out and found some lunch then went to the train station. We had a train at 4:00 to Chengdu and then another train at 5:50 to Chongqing. Our plane left Chongqing at 9:30 and we would land in Shanghai about three hours after that. We had conquered Emei Mountain and were on our way home.

But our adventure was not quite over. In the train station at Chengdu, we had twenty-five minutes to collect our tickets and get to the boarding gate. When we got off the train, I looked at a few signs and headed down the train station to the right. When we got to the end, we realized we went the wrong way and had to walk all the way back to the other end of the station. Then, the lines to pick up tickets were going extremely slow, so we lost more time there. We finally got our tickets, ran to security, ran to the gate, put our tickets into the machine, and got rejected. We missed boarding by two minutes. They stop boarding five minutes to departure, which means our train was still sitting there in the station.

The next train wouldn't get us into Chongqing until after our plane left. There were no long distance buses going from Chengdu to Chongqing. Our only option was to find different flights back to Shanghai. We began searching and Tom found one seat left on a flight that left Chengdu at 12:40 the next day, so I grabbed it. Then, Tom found two seats on a 7:30 flight the next morning, also from Chengdu. We also managed to cancel our original flights with only a small service fee.

We found a hostel, booked our room and then made our way to the metro. Again, we wandered about for a while before we found it, but we did find it. After dropping off our stuff, we went out and walked around the city for a few hours.

We had the idea for me to go with the other two early in the morning and see if I could sign up as a standby on their flight and hopefully jump on with them. It wasn't until we got to the airport that I realized we had flights with different airline companies, so our plan wasn't going to work. So I stayed in the Chengdu airport for five hours by myself where pretty much no one spoke English. I just chilled. I wrote some about our adventures. I ate some food. I took a small nap.

At about 12:20, I boarded my flight and landed in Shanghai less than three hours later. Due to arriving back during the day instead of in the middle of the night like our original plan, I was able to ride the MagLev train (magnetic levitation). When Tom and Cai rode it that morning, it didn't go to its top speed, but it did when I rode. It's pretty cool to be traveling along that fast. It feels rather like accelerating in a plane on the runway just before lift-off. That converts to 268 mph. I got back to the Faculty Hotel at Jiao Tong at 4:40 pm and was pretty happy to be back.

And that concludes the final chapter of my Chinese New Year vacations. It was most definitely a splendiferous adventure. And my lesson is learned. Do research before climbing a mountain. If you ever find yourself in China, do make your way to Emeishan in Sichuan province and have a go at the mountain. Just remember to give yourself two days and take your passports and plenty of money with you.

Have a Splendiferous Day!