Yellow Mountain Musings

I've never been a fan of the Stairmaster. I have nothing against stairs, mind you. You could even say I enjoy stairs in small doses; I'll take the stairs over the elevator if the distance is under four stories (five on a good day). With that in mind I am a bit confused about how I came to climb 14,000 stairs up a mountain –for fun. In my defense, I didn't know that the Yellow Mountain had stairs. I'd figured there would be a path, of course, but envisioned scrambling over rocks and boulders. Instead, I found myself having to use the exact same leg muscles on each step of a 6-hour Stairmaster Workout of Death.

While I dragged myself up the mountain, I was amazed to pass workers climbing the stairs with huge yoke-loads of materials up the mountain. They stopped to rest every 30 steps or so, but their sheer tenacity amazed me! Several workers carried a yoke balancing two cinder blocks that swayed as they climbed. As I cautiously edged around them, I wondered: Do their legs hurt as much as mine do? How long does it take them to climb the mountain? What then? The hotel is 2 cinder blocks closer to their expansion? Tomorrow maybe they'll be 2 more blocks closer, thanks to brute human labour.

It was almost like watching history; after all, this is how the Pyramids were built, not to mention the Great Wall. Huge structures have been built stone by stone by hundreds of tireless workers receiving little to no pay. It may have been faster for a company to pay to airlift materials in, or ferry them up on one of several available cable cars, but why pay more when cheap labour exists?

The cheap labour force is what keeps the mountain-top hotels operating. In addition to building materials, workers also carried linens and luggage up and down. Somewhere, there is a man panting down a mountain so that the sheet I slept on can be laundered at the base of the mountain and sent back up afterward.

Please don't get me wrong--despite my aching muscles and puzzlement over labour, I loved the Yellow Mountain. It was strikingly beautiful, especially in the mist that shrouded it for our two-day trip. Some may have wished for clear skies, but I appreciated the mystical, magical feel of literally being in the clouds. I watched enormous jagged rock formations appear out of the mist, only to disappear when I glanced back. The sky was pure white, the clouds almost tangible. Every now and then the rushing wind would sweep away the mist and reveal deep canyons and precipitous peaks alive with enduring trees.

The Yellow Mountain has a multitude of jagged peaks. Once the initial torturous climb was over, it was actually fairly easy to make my way from one peak to another. In the clouds, the air grew colder and wetter, eventually turning to rain during the night. My group slept in cocooned blankets while mourning the untimely death of our room's space heater.

The next day dawned even more misty than the first; I could barely see the forms of people 20 feet from me. As white air rushed by silently, the whole mountain seemed hushed. We quietly and slowly made our way down slickened stairs, pausing every now and then to marvel at the glowing clouds that cocooned us in their own form of a blanket.

As I descended, the landscape began to resemble an Amazon rainforest more than China. Moss-covered rocks and dripping-wet trees painted the view every shade of green imaginable. A waterfall appeared next to us and kept growing larger as we got closer to the bottom. For half an hour, it was next to us, rushing and roaring with the previous night's rainfall, eventually transforming into a healthy river at the base.

Looking up to see the mountain as we boarded a bus back to the nearby city of Huangshan, I was met with a cloudy sky that revealed no peaks. Only my protesting leg muscles were evidence of the hidden Yellow Mountain.