THE Lowly Peon

emei shan, part two 
20 September 2009, 10:42am

a few years older, a few pounds fatter, and a few experiences wiser, i returned to chengdu for one purpose: to once again conquer emei shan [...and to work, i suppose]

a few years back, simonite, masha & i decided to take a small break from heavenly kunming and head up north to chengdu to climb the famous buddhist mountain emei (峨眉山). we had no idea what we were in for, and decided to wing it, as we had been, and hope for the best. upon arriving, we had quite an adventure finding out where to go, what to do, and, more than anything, realizing exactly what kind of climb this mountain was.

for any of you who have been to china, you know that buddhist mountains (or even just buddhist temples) generally mean one thing: stairs. it's a wonder that the [chinese version of the] buddha was so fat, because these guys apparently spend half their lives building stairs, and the other half walking up them. well, emei shan is roughly 10,000ft from bottom to top, and stairs all along the way.

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two weeks ago, after i had spent twelve hours resting after my trip to houston, i set out to chengdu. i had a bit of work to do, and had planned on getting "sick" on monday, such that i had a three day weekend. daisy, our friends/colleagues mike & donna, and i set off by bus to emei. remembering the cold and the climb, as well as the amazing views, from my last trip, i packed a bunch of warm clothes, my nice camera, and my iPhone, complete with a GPS tracking app. we arrived after a pretty easy bus ride, about two hours.

while we were trying to figure out how far we could go before the sun went down, and if it was enough to get to a place to sleep, we met another american guy named chris. i helped translate for a bit, and after a while, we decided to join together. so the five of us set out to climb emei.

we stayed at a pretty decent place, salamanders (not saulemander), crickets and all. dinner was delicious.

we woke up early the next day and began our climb. starting elevation: 611m.

it took us a solid 10 hours of climbing up stairs, handmade at some point (we decided it was funded by the government rather than the monks), through the thick fog, past the hard wok cafe, past the monasteries and the waterfalls, and the monkeys that tried to rob us, to get to our stay for the night.

we stayed at a small monastery, the same one i stayed at with simonite and masha years before. within ten minutes, the little monk guy at the counter was getting angry with us because of some money problem, as he was taking 450rmb (about US$65. aka a lot) from us for the room. this took a lot of the magic from emei for me, as last time was under 20rmb, there were no other people, and the monks were happy and drunk and chanting while we were there. they weren't angry accountants.

we slept like stones after watching an incredible sunset over the clouds.

the next morning, we ate some crappy rice porridge before heading out for day two. as i recalled, the second day was only a few hours, and then the top (for which i wanted some energy!). (sidenote: the first time i went, we had no idea where we were going and wound up going in a huge circle, because the map was completely misleading, such that the inch between two places in here was 10 minutes and an inch at the other part of the map was 12 hours.)

once we got toward the top, there were some incredible views. like this one, where you could look straight down a crevasse into an ocean of fog (note my feet at the bottom of the image). eventually, we made it to the near-summit. i was so proud of myself, making it up to 2000m. but then i realized that about a zillion other people were here too. interesting, i thought. i don't remember seeing this many people on the way up. oh right. they took smelly smoggy gas-guzzling buses. nice. i knew i should wait for everyone else, but the buses made me angry, so mike & i booked it past the buses and into a bigger load of people, where we had agreed to meet before.

a few hours later, we were at the top. at last. 2503m (according to my iPhone). exhausted, we wandered around a bit, found that the path to the other peak was closed, ate some dinner, and passed out.

we woke up at 5:30 or so to see the sunrise. this sunrise was the reason i came back to emei. it's been the backdrop of my iPhone for as long as i can remember. it's also the one picture i show people when i say how amazing sunrises can be. except this time, i had my nice camera!

and i'll tell you. the sunrise was amazing. you could actually see the sun below the sea of clouds, and then, a few minutes later, you could see the sun rise above the clouds. the moon was also up, and also beautiful.

what i particularly liked about the hour or so after was that the sun heated up the clouds below us, so they started rising. the whole mountain seemed to disappear, except for the tiny little temple on the other peak (that's on of my favorites).

it was a great time.

if you have some time, i'd recommend checking out some of these photos. i put them on my mobileme page. the album is called emei shan 09. i hope to edit them a bit, and maybe add up some more. after that, i'll put them onto petercompernolle.com and maybe even flickr.

you can also see my GPS tracking here (note: link is a KML file to open with google earth or other map apps), though i must warn you that it was my first time using this app, and it's not totally right. the first hour or so is a straight line because i accidentally locked my phone, and it ran out of batteries with about two hours left in the climb. it also includes only the first day, because somehow it thought i went to africa the second day. interesting.