Day 3 - Jade Dragon Snow Mountain

here is the beast on the drive in. the woman that cornered us on the first day in Lijiang got us to use her husband who was a taxi driver to take us to the mountain. about a 40 min ride. it was 150 rmb ($22). He took us and waited for hours to take us back. all for 22 bucks, crazy right? this was the most expensive thing we did because you have to pay an 80 rmb ($10) conservation fee, a 170 rmb lift ticket up the mountain on the cable car, and then the 150 rmb to the driver. All said and done it cost probably $50 which might not seem like much but you have to kind of think in chinese money terms when you're here, and $50 US dollars is expensive! this cable car was pretty scary since i am afraid of heights. there were some sections that were definitley more that 45 degree angles. This is not really climbing a mountain. if i had known that it would just be this kind of staircase all the way up i would have tried to go to a different section, maybe the section where there is a meadow at the top and yaks running around. at any rate this mountain is tall and when we got off the cable car we had a hard time breathing and were dizzy. sort of like being buzzed. it would get better then we would walk up a few steps and be really tired and buzzed again. it is pretty cool that we were high enough to be effected like that. I'm glad that i was ok compared to a lot of other people. they sold these oxygen inhaler things that lots of people were using but they couldnt even tell if it was working or not. this was dumb. i climbed over the hand rail thing and climbed up this little rocky embankment to get this photo of this super dangerous chasm below. the mountain patrol guys were yelling at us telling us its super dangerous and that they will kick us out. looking back at it after i got back over the hand rail it was pretty stupid. the rocks were shale like and crumbly so not so safe. and lily was having a hard time walking in the first place. glaciers! at the "top". as high as the stairs went and as high as you were allowed to go. this is the highest i've ever been. since this is the first mountain i've ever been on. definitely breathing hard. definitley had a headache for the rest of the day. more towards the bottom they didn't yell at people for walking aroudn outside of the stairs. i spotted a slope that looked not too dangerous for sliding down. It took a bunch of tried to get a good track down and i ended up using a map to as a sled. stupid. there's a video below. wheel in the cable car pulley system. what a lovely shade of yellow huh? altitude sickness isn't as cool as i thought it would be. anyway i want to try tibet next. the average height of the tibetean pleatu is 4500 meters and i was at 4680 at the highest point and having a hard time. if i learned anything from this trip its about meters and height. since i am american i don't know about this kind of stuff. i should also not do stupid things that jason raish would normally do when im this high because i am basically buzzed and even more dumb than usual.

0 comments: