The mountain with the mostest

There is something about traveling, always, there is something. It's a unique and valuable experience to be able to take time off from life, put things on hold (whether they are okay with that or not is a different question), and see what life is like outside of your life. Honestly the best thing that happened to me this trip was forgetting my cellphone charger in Shanghai over the past week. It allowed me to immerse myself in a world that was just not 'my world'.

I was down in Shanghai to visit my friend Josh and be introduced into the couches he sits on sunday afternoons, his favorite wednesday night watering holes, and people who help him keep on keepin' on. I will say right now that it was a great vacation, for many reasons. I won't go into to much detail about the who the people were or what happened in Shanghai but rather keep this blog about me..because I'm selfish..and this blog was created to write about me. Shanghai is vacation but at the same time not so much. While I am becoming more and more comfortable there, learning the city, and it continues to be a possible next place to live, it is not different enough from Beijing (debatable but just stomach it for now) to seem exotic. On the other hand, Josh, my, and our 9 travel companions adventure into the heart of China was much more so.

On Sunday morning we aroused ourselves after, let's call it a 2-hour nap, to get to the long distance bus terminal. Long day of travel short, we finally arrived in Huangshan city. One evening of brown drink later, we again slowly woke up, had a delicious breakfast of eggs to fuel ourselves for the oncoming adventure. At no point up until the enusing events occured did any of us have any sort of clue what we were in for. The plan was to hike up Huangshan, then on the peak at 1800m (~5500ft) camp overnight, catch the sunrise, and make it down the next day. We began at about noon and began hiking. The first sign of things awry was the hike. It struck us that this 'hike' was merely a climb up thousands and thousands of steps. The actual distance we traveled was under 10km but the vertical we mounted was too large a portion of that. Up and up we went, getting hungry, but determined to get to the top, being bumped by the chinese that walk 3 across a 3 person lane and bumping the back, playing the ultimate time kill game 20 questions, and politely and willingly allowing photos to be snapped then angry and jokingly demanding 10rmb a photo, all the while enjoying ourselves. Finally, we reach the top.

The summit of the mountain deserves a paragraph of it's own. I repeat, the summit of the mountain deserves a paragraph of it's own. We stake our flag down on top at about 3:30pm and grab some food before the snapping pictures, enjoying the view, and getting ready for the night. As the sun is setting we start noticing the second strange thing about our journey. People are setting up camp. On the concrete tourist areas to marvel at the view. There is no grass to camp on, just hard concrete. Actually knowing how to camp, we scour an area off the main road a bit that still is concrete but in each square has 4 holes with enough dirt to stake our tents down. It's nice because we are off the main area, so when we polish off the brown drink we had packed to keep us warm, it would not inconvenience anyone else. At this point an officer comes up to us and starts bitching about where we pitched our tent. Of course, we cant pitch at that spot. We have to pitch on concrete. And also, to camp up top we have to register with our passports. After some serious argument which of course I lost, we went to the police station to retrieve the information of those who had not brought the passport along. It is amazing how fast and what they can procure with your passport number or even just your name. Honestly. After registering and finally convincing him to let us pitch our tents just a bit off the main grounds where there is dirt we get to work. It's almost fully dark now, so we get going fast only to be approached by a different officer. He harasses us and I try to tell him we were given permission, turns out the first officer just got off duty and had allowed us to spend the night in an area that was not his jurisdiciton. The site must have been divisioned because we were in a new officers area, and it was his mission to keep us protected from the wild animals. I kid you not. Now fully dark, we pick a spot, pitch our makeshift tents, which by the way were severly undersized. Think 3 tents for 6 people but actually going to fit 11. But hey, its okay, we need that body warmth because everyone knows that temperatures drop at night and on mountaintops.

It should be known that when we started the day we were hiking up the mountain in shorts and t-shirts for the beginning, but as we near the top we began gearing up obviously as the temperature dropped. By this point it is pretty chilly. We decide to go for dinner and start having some brown drink. After dinner it's totally dark and silent outside, we are bored, so we look at our watch and see that it is 8:30pm. Oh man, I haven't fallen asleep before 9 since i was eight. We walk to where we had originally wanted to pitch our tent (no problem to walk and be there just to sleep), and hang out for a while chatting in the dark with flashlights, bundled up in not enough jackets or clothes, playing games, and having some warmth. By this point it is a solid 50 degrees outside I should mention. It's cold but not enough to prevent us from changing the plans but its coming up in conversation. We keep drinking and playing around, occasionally going into the hotel they built on top of this mountain to use the bathroom, and laughing at the people sleeping in the lobby who rented mats because they didn't want to tent or couldn't get a room. If this was a movie, a crow would caw right now or cue some other ominous symbol. Around 12, exhausted, we walk to the lobby just to warm up and for some people to pee. It is now a very very solid 40 degrees outside and thankfully neither windy nor rainy. At this point two of our comrades begin to explore the hotel, wondering if this might be the better option. I go outside with a guy to take a leak and begin walking down a stone stairwell. Being a guy who loves to exercise his god given right and ability to go anywhere, we stop on the stairs, my friend goes to the right side along a mountain, so i obviously go left towards a wall. It's rather black and as a step forward, I fall into an abyss. This is no metaphor. I  did not take a tumble, or a spill, I fell into a hole. Luckily there was a wall and a window on the other side and I managed to grab the metals bars instinctively as I smacked my face into them and beat my knees and legs on the concrete floor. This very easily could have resulted in a lot worse consequence, like a broken ankle or something. Freaked out, I go back upstairs and tell everyone the what, why, and how. Our friend Peter then comes back from somewhere and I tell him that I fell into a hole. After I calm down and the adrenaline stops running so fast, we start walking back towards our tents to call it a night. Ka-plunk, Peter falls down the same hole, same spot, same goal, to pee. Couldn't make this stuff up, I feel bad because if I had only told him how I fell and not just that I fell maybe I could have prevented it. Oh well, it's only fitting looking back.

So we get to the tents, now pretty much constantly shivering, our numbers have dwindled from 11 to 7. We split up into the tents and according to plan, encouraged by brown drink fall into slumber....I wake up, the first thing I notice is the chill on my backside. I am on the end of the line of people so can only warm one side at a time. I am wearing a tank top, polo shirt, sweater, track jacket, and rain jacket. Not nearly enough. No blanket (yes looking back this would have been obvious but a) we didnt think it would reach freezing and b) wellyeah I just forgot it). My jeans and socks slightly damp from falling into the pit earlier and slowly acquiring that cold, numbing feeling. I can feel the person sleeping next to me shaking and having irregular breaths. Mine are not so regular either. I hug closer, but the cold nylon tent seems to hug closer to me too. Finally at the ripe time of 1:30am I call it an evening. Yes, sad to say, I caved and after 1 hour made the way to the hotel. I begin to search the silent hotel for the ideal location to place myself. As I soon find out, this is China and national holiday so most places are occupied. I start walking down the stairs and find at the bottom 2 of my companions spooning on a mattress (both guys). I am jealous of their spot. I walk down a hallway and finally decide to pitch myself behind a secondary registration desk. I nap a weird, brown colored type mat and wrap myself in it like a hot dog, trying to sleep softer and with some semblance of a blanket. I wake up at 3:00 shivering and see Josh staring at me, 1 more down. I wake up at 4:15 to Chinese people leaving there rooms and staring at the foreigner sleeping on the floor. I slowly get up, dry-eyed, underslept, hungover, a stinging on my face and knees, and still cold. I want to emphasize that when I toured the hotel I came across multiple open doors (which for reasons unknown to me I did not close) so inside the hotel was comparable to that of an igloo. The troops assemble and the stories come out. The two people on the mattress turned into 3 spoons by the end of the night. One friend tripped over my feet searching for his spot. Another laughed at the man on the floor rolled up in the mattress until he recognizzed the red jacket and new balances. He slept 1 floor up in the same spot. All in all, 11 campers, 2 made it through the night outside. So boughetto but we used a left over room's bathroom to do what we could to improve our hygiene and prepared for the sunrise.

It was awesome, looking back at photos it was a truly amazing sunset. We stayed on top for about 45 minutes while the sun rose and enjoyed that it would soon begin to warm our bodies, souls, hearts, and minds.  We started down the mountain and within 10 minutes it was noticeably warmer after exiting the peak. The whole way down as the sun was just rising was magnificent. There was not a cloud in the sky and the air was crisp, clear, and picture-worthy or which I have many. We finally reached the bottom of the mountain and gathered ourselves. On the bus back to the town I fell asleep just as the bus left, I woke up 5 minutes later to find every one of our group sound asleep as well. There is no question we left a piece of ourselves up on that mountain, not a doubt in my mind. We started as the trip as 11 and ended as 10 because one called it short due to general health problems induced by the conditions we put ourselves through. 11 started the night outside and 2 ended it. Two of us bled on the top of that mountain in that damned hole and my throat has hurt since we woke that morning (4 days now). But I have now conquered my first of China's 4 majestic mountains. And now I know what it'll take to one day write a post titled the man not the mountain with the mostest. One day..