Mount Huashan in China | Mt. Huashan China hike | Worlds most dangerous hiking trail
Mount huashan in China. It is situated in Huayin city, which is 120 kilometers (about 75 miles) from Xian. Mount Huashan has a Variety of temples and other religious structures on its slopes and peaks. Additionally atop the southern most peak of Mount Huashan is an ancient tourist temple which in modern times has been converted into a tea house.Mount Huashan has historically been a place of retreat for hardly hermits, whether, daoist, buddhist or others. There are three routes leading to Mount Huashan's North Peak (1,614 m (5,295 ft)), the lowest of the mountain's five major peaks. The most popular is the traditional route in Hua Shan Yu (Hua Shan Gorge), first developed in the 3rd to 4th century A.D. and with successive expansion, mostly during the Tang Dynasty. It winds for 6 km from Huashan village to the north peak. A new route in Huang Pu Yu (Huang Pu Gorge, named after the hermit Huang Lu Zi who lived in this gorge in 8th century BC) follows the cable car to the North Peak, and is actually the ancient trail used prior to the Tang Dynasty, which has since fallen into disrepair. It had only been known to local villagers living nearby at the gorges since 1949, when a group of seven People's Liberation Army soldiers with a local guide used this route to climb to the North Peak and captured over 100 Kuomintang soldiers stationed on the North Peak and along the path of the traditional route. This trail is now known as The Intelligent Take-over Route of Hua Shan, and was reinforced in early 2000. The Cable Car System stations are built next to the beginning and ends of this trail. A second cable car line, to the West Peak, was opened in 2013.From the North Peak, a series of paths rise up to the Canglong Ling, which is a climb more than 300 m (984 ft) on top of a mountain ridge. This was the only trail to go to the four other peaks—the West Peak (2,038 m (6,686 ft)), the Center Peak (2,042 m (6,699 ft)), the East Peak (2,100 m (6,900 ft)) and the South Peak (2154.9m),[5]—until a new path was built to the east around the ridge in 1998.Huashan has historically been a place of retreat for hardy hermits, whether Daoist, Buddhist or other; access to the mountain was only deliberately available to the strong-willed, or those who had found the way. With greater mobility and prosperity, Chinese, particularly students, began to test their mettle and visit in the 1980s.The rout up of Mount Huashan has been named as one of the most dangerous hikes in the world. The inherent danger of many of the exposed, narrow pathways with precipitous drops gave the mountain a deserved reputation for danger. As tourism has boomed and the mountain's accessibility vastly improved with the installation of the cable car in the 1990s, visitor numbers have surged. Despite the safety measures introduced by cutting deeper pathways and building up stone steps and wider paths, as well as adding railings, fatalities continued to occur. The local government has proceeded to open new tracks and created one-way routes on some of the more dangerous parts, such that the mountain can be scaled without extreme risk now, barring crowds and icy conditions. Some of the most precipitous tracks have actually been closed off. The former trail that led to the South Peak from the North Peak is on a cliff face, and it was known as being extremely dangerous; there is now a new and safer stone-built path to reach the South Peak temple, and on to the Peak itself. Mount Huashan is known as being extremely dangerous. Many Chinese still climbed at nighttime, in order to reach the cast peak by dawn-though the mountain now has many hotels. This practice is a holdover from when it was considered safer to simply be unable to see the extreme danger of the tracks during the ascent, as well as to avoid meeting descending visitors at points were pathways have scarcely enough room for one visitor to pass through safely.