The clearest view of the weekend
The main purpose of my trip to Anhui a week ago was to visit friends whose students were performing a musical. But on last year’s trip to Anhui, I didn’t have the chance to climb the famous Yellow Mountains (Huangshan, 黄山), and this trip offered a good opportunity to remedy that deficit, as well.
Since we were locked into the performance weekend, I didn’t spend too much time worrying about the weather. We were going to climb Huangshan come hell or high water. But maybe I should have paid more attention to the risk of high water.
Hiking up the mountain, it was drizzling and misty — almost as bad as Emei Shan. Huangshan’s famous peaks — which are really more pink than yellow — only occasionally peered through the fog. At the summit, we saw what appeared to be another hidden peak. When a gust of wind briefly parted the clouds, it proved to be just a large soccer-ball shaped monument, inexplicably placed atop Bright Summit Peak.
Given the first day’s bad weather, we were skeptical about waking up for sunrise after the night we spent on the mountain. But we reluctantly set our alarms for 5 a.m., anyway, hoping that Huangshan would redeem itself. And oh, how lucky that we did:
Wait a second. That’s not what we saw. We were actually greeted by yet another wall of mist, without even a glimmer of sunshine. The beautiful sunrise is a postcard I bought at the bottom of the mountain. But if I put it on my bulletin board, maybe my brain will eventually convince itself that that is really what I saw.
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“…A whole new world
Every turn a surprise
With new horizons to pursue
Every moment red-letter….”
Or at least a quite lovely postcard.
Thanks for the post Jess. Three friends and myself are hoping to run a part of the Yellow mountains when we head up through China over the next few months. Hpefully it wont be as misty as your climb though as the whole point of the run is to see the view from the top!
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