Huangshan

I have only been in China for just less than a month now, but I can boldy say this: If you go to China and you do not see Huangshan, you missed out. Big time.

The Chinese say that if you see Huangshan (Yellow Mountain), you do not need to see other mountains because you've seen it all. Well I saw Huangshan and their claim is pretty accurate. I do plan on seeing other mountains during my life, but I can't imagine any scene being quite as spectacular as what I saw this last weekend. It was that amazing.

Hiking Huangshan is nothing like the zig-zag dirt trails that every other mountain the world has.  Rather, to scale Huangshan you must take the ridiculously steep cement staircase. I'm not quite sure how those stairs were laid (all I know is that Chinese labor laws are very different than American) but just looking at the seemingly never-ending stairs was breathtaking. Walking them was also breathtaking, for an entirely different reason.  And I totally enjoyed every step.

Not only did I enjoy running up and down the incredibly steep stairs, I also enjoyed the heat and the humidity!  I can honestly say that I don't ever remember being as sweaty as I was after hiking Huangshan.  I'm sure there was at least one time when I sweated more; I just don't remember it. It's a Barnes thing.

We ended up hiking to the tops of several different peaks with each view as magnificent as the next.  The mountains were so majestic that they looked fake--almost like Disneyland's Splash Mountain. Our guides pointed out different rock formations and how they resembled different animals. For example, I saw a couple of turtles, a monkey, and a rabbit! I thought I saw rocks in the form of Yao Ming, but apparently it was just the altitude toying with my mind.

I've posted some pictures from our Huangshan excursion. I took some of these pictures but most were taken by others--after taking about 15 pictures my battery died on me, naturally.  The pictures are incredible, but they honestly do not do any justice to what I saw.  I still need to get other pictures from some friend so I'll post those to the slideshow as soon as I can.