Stairway to heaven?

1/12/07
Knees are still shattering after climbing one of the most beautiful mountains I have ever seen. Hang Shang is the name of the mountain and it promises to amaze and explode muscles you never knew you had with it's continuous 25km of uphill steps!
Wake up at 6:00am and catch a shuttle bus from my hostel in downtown Tunxi to the main gate of the mountain. Meet a very nice chinese women and an Austrian dude named Thomas in the shuttle and we make a pact to climb it together - no man left behind! We set off via the Western steps, the longer and more difficult way up but with far better scenery. We pass up snaking steps , through rock caverns and caves, past 100's of chinese porters carrying all kinds of stuff while the cable car zooms overhead (cheap labour anyone?) All the while we are presented with some of Chinas most amazing Karst scenery. I spend the night on the sumit in a crummy dorm room for 100rmb and have no problem falling asleep over the snoring coming from my Chinese dorm chums. Wake up at 5am, and with no showers i grab a thermus filled with hot water and splash the bed bugs out of my eyebrows (joking) . Head outside just in time to see the sunrise through the mist, injecting an intense organge into the horrizon. Even with hundreds of chattering chinese the scene was breathtaking. The whole morning was topped off when a gang of monkeys come out of the trees and chase away the tourists! (See photos of the bad ass monkeys, not sure what kind they are, Mattie-B any idea?)Meet up with two Australians who are living in China for a year working as environmental researchers, studying erosion. They live in the south and offer me a couch if I'm ever down that way. I head back down, with legs screaming in pain, but with a little help from Marley on the ipod I make it back to base camp and from there it's a $4nzd taxi back to the hostel.
Tomorrow Xi-an!