Mount Huashan, Shaanxi, China

4tamaletown 5:00 PM Feb 1, 2020

A memorable experience.
It is certainly a memorable experience! I am glad I went, but was seriously amazed at how many others were also there. Wow. That aside, there are some stunning views on a fine day and there are so many routes you can take, to do as little or as many peaks as you want. I had a driver who dropped me at the West peak cablecar. There is also one at the north peak, so pay attention to which one you are at once you get to the top. Plan from there. There are enough maps around that you can plot your course and see how quickly or slowly you end up proceeding. Tickets are bought in stages. I couldn’t buy return tix for the shuttle bus or the cable car, so my first lot of tickets at the first (main) entrance were for an entrance fee, a one way shuttle bus and a one way cable car. From here, you join the queue for the shuttle bus which takes about half an hour and wends up the mountain, to the base of the cable car area. To save time later, you might want to now buy your return shuttle bus ticket here, in this building. Then Follow everyone up the assorted stairs (get used to this, you will be doing it a lot today!) and join the queue for the cablecar. Upon reaching the top, look for the assorted maps that give you an overview of the various routes. I have tried to attach two photos to this review, which I found helpful. The time from the main entrance (after buying tickets) to the top of the cablecar took me 1.5 hours. Same thing on the return (and it wasn’t wildly busy), so factor this into your day. There are lots of venues for food, snacks, restaurants, drinks etc. so even though I packed my own lunch and brought lots of water, there was certainly options up there, and also a supermarket / convenience store just outside the main entrance. So you aren’t going to starve!

4Yunjie 5:00 PM Jul 13, 2021

Huashan now open to foreigners
Huashan is now open to foreigners. The park hotline suggested we enter with recent COVID tests, but no one asked to see them when we arrived. You’ll need to buy entrance tickets (and cable car tickets if that’s your plan) directly from ticket offices as wechat miniprograms and ctrip will only accept a Chinese ID. Staying on the mountain will be tricky if you don’t speak Chinese, as noone working in the hotels speaks English (as far as I know). Lodging on top of the mountain is not accepting reservations on English sites as far as I can tell, and ctrip also requires a Chinese id holder to book a room. We got around this by writing fake Chinese names on our ctrip booking (it didn’t actually require us to list an ID number) and calling the hotel to confirm that they would still accept us if our names didn’t match the booking info. It may also be possible to book by phone, but the hotel was resistant to do this for us for some reason. In the end, every park employee that we interacted with was unbothered by the fact that we were foreigners and was very easygoing/helpful. Some local tourists were a bit rude, but any foreigner going to huashan these days is likely used the the occasional staring, pointing, or less than stealthy photo taking that comes with living here as an expat. On another note, the plank walk has undergone some safety/logistical changes (people are sent out in groups, no more two way traffic, no more unhooking of carabiners during the walk) however these changes have lead to what I assume are much longer wait times, even if you get there relatively early.