I am so excited to write this blog because I am confident that this post will inspire you to seek out the truly unique experience that is the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park. Visiting the park was one of the most wonderful and memorable experiences of my life. The park is located in the northwest Hunan Province of China, next to a beautiful little town called Wulingyuan. You can access the park from various entrances. The main entrance and eastern entrance is situated next to Wulingyuan town. The western entrance to the park requires you to take a 30-minute bus ride from Wulingyuan bus station. One of the amazing features of the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park is the vertical sandstone pillars. There are over 3000 of these pillars, stretching hundreds of meters vertically into the sky, covered in a dense sub-tropical rain forest.
Firstly, I am going to share my guide to hiking through this park, I am the ‘Extreme Sports Traveller’ after all. If you are not a hiker, don’t stop reading now. This is such an exciting trip that I know you will enjoy reading about it. The park provides tourists, of all fitness levels, an opportunity to see the wonder that is Zhangjiajie National Forest Park. As a tourist, you have the option of taking a cable car up to various scenic spots. You can also make use of a tour guide or join a tour group. My advice to you, however, is to rather explore the park using the map as your guide and not make use of those options. I was able to discover parts of the park that tourists are not usually taken to see on these guided walks. If I’d used a tour guide, I would never have gone off on the small side paths, indicated on the map, to discover an area of the park no tourist had ever seemed to visit. Taking a self-guided hike through this park is truly the only way to experience the natural beauty secretly hidden behind all those man-made things in the park.
The best time to explore
The Zhangjiajie National Forest Park is a major tourist attraction and can easily become overcrowded, so you can imagine that choosing the best time to visit is a crucial step to making the most of your experience. The best time to visit the park is around the summertime and off-season period. Though snow covered mountains are beautiful, the real magic of this place lies in hiking next to beautiful sparkling streams and walking through the amazing rainforest, where the trees seem to disappear into the sky. Hiking up thousands of steps carved into the mountainside to find yourself emerging among thousands of sandstone pillars which shoot up from the forest floor is just a sight words cannot describe.
The park covers a massive 243 square miles, so it is essential to plan each day in advance. It is possible to visit all the scenic spots in two days. You will have to be content with using the elevator (cable car) and being bombarded by thousands of bustling Chinese tourists all trying to get that perfect picture by any means necessary. As the ‘Extreme Sports Traveller’ this is obviously not my recommendation for you. To get the full magical and mystical experience this beautiful place has to offer, I recommend you plan a 3-4 day stay. This way you can explore various scenic areas, miss all the tourist groups and still be back in town every afternoon to enjoy a well-deserved beer with your fellow hikers.
Maps You can buy a map at the park entrance or in town, but most maps are focussed on the tourist spots and seem inadequate as a guide to explore this awesome park. I searched the internet and bought a few, but there is only one map that gives a detailed representation of all the hiking paths, bus routes and scenic spots. I took a picture of my map which I will use as a reference when explaining the hikes to you in this blog. You can buy this map for RMB 5 at Zhangjiajie PeakCap Backpacker Hostel.
Day One
On day one I did the most hiking, but it was the day that took me to the most beautiful and secluded areas in the park. If you are not fit or haven’t got some hiking experience, my suggestion to you would be to skip the hike through the unmarked area on the map, hike up to the Yuanjiajie Scenic area bus stop, and take it to the last viewpoint I visited on day one. I hiked for hours on day one and encountered thousands of steps which led me up and around the mountain side to some of the highest sandstone pillars in the park. Needless to say, this is a tough hike.
Raring to go and excited for the day, I arrived at the park entrance at 7 am. Arriving early and as the gates open will ensure that you maximise your time in the park before the streams of tourists overcrowd the park. The main entrance (eastern entrance) is on the western side of town in Vuling road, next to the river. I purchased a ticket, which cost RMB 248 and is valid for three days. All the buses shuttle tourists for free and stop off at the parks popular landmarks, where you can choose to get off, hike up the mountain or take the cable car up. Once on top of the mountain, there will be more busses that can shuttle you to the other scenic spots on the mountain. Make sure to check the bus schedule so that you don’t miss the bus returning to the main entrance at the end of your day. One of the parks treasures, safely tucked away and waiting to be explored by those who dare to walk further along the path and leave the bustling tourists behind, is the Golden Whip Brook. This is a good place to start hiking on day one and you can show one of the bus assistants your map and request to go to the Golden Whip Brook stop. This stop is the second stop and the drive should take about 20 minutes. I noticed that there was one way to distinguish the camera happy tourist from the inspired hiker. Camera happy tourists always turned back around and never strayed far from the scenic spots leaving the unexplored beauty of the park to the inspired hiker to hike in peace. Tourists enjoy the convenience of the cable car and Extreme Sports Travellers enjoy the road less travelled.
My theory was once again proven right as I started the Golden Whip Brook hiking path with four other tourists and after 500m they all turned back around, leaving this overjoyed Extreme Sports Traveller to hike in peace. It wasn’t long before all the noise, shouting photographers and clicking cameras disappeared and I felt like I was the only one in the park. The Golden Whip Stream is a 7.5km hike and will take you all the way to the western entrance of the park. Hiking along the Golden Whip Brook path was the most breath-taking experience. The path follows a crystal clear stream and winds through the rain forest. Finding myself at the foot of the mountain, hearing the wind blowing through the trees and the rustling leaves, topped off with the magnificent sandstone pillars extending straight up into the sky for hundreds of meters, made me feel like I had been transported into another world. This is a place that overwhelms the senses and around every bend, there is something new that would take my breath away. It truly is a photographer’s dream.
The path to turn off to the Yuanjiajie Scenic Area, better known as ‘Avatar Mountain’, comes after about 3 km of being on the Golden Whip Brook. The path is hidden behind a fountain bubbling out of a natural rock wall and if you don’t look closely you will miss it, as I did. I didn’t worry too much about this because I knew that I had only planned to take that path on day two. I continued on andI passed the Zicao Pool. About halfway up the Golden Whip Brook path, I found the turn-off to my final destination for the day, called the “meeting of a thousand ways” (I have marked it on the map). This spot is marked by a big restaurant and various souvenir shops which could be a nice spot to stop and have a few refreshments before continuing on. Before reaching the turn-off spot, I first had to cross a beautiful bridge after which the path took me through the forest at a steady incline and after about 2km I came upon a t-junction. This spot is noticeable by an old western style house on your right-hand side. The path that leads to the left has a sign that indicates that there is a dead-end ahead. The path leading to the right will take you to the road and back to the Yuanjiajie Scenic Area (If you are not an experienced hiker take the path to the right). Naturally, the explorer inside of me wanted to see where the path to the left leads, and that’s exactly what I did. I expected the path the end after a few hundred meters, but it didn’t. It kept going on and on and after each hill I crested, I told myself that I would turn around and go back. How could I do that when, with each turn, the scenery just became more and more breath-takingly beautiful. After cresting yet another hill I found myself standing on the edge of a ledge hundreds of meters high. In front of me was a chasm filled with sandstone pillars as far as the eye could see. The amazing thing was that I was only half way up and I could see the path leading around the chasm and up the other side. I could see the pillars extending further and further into the distance as they continued to ebb and flow into what seemed like eternity.
It was clear that I had reached the point of no return. If I decided to keep on following the trail, I might walk for miles and risk sleeping on the mountain. The Extreme Sports Traveller in me wanted to reach the end of those never-ending structures more than anything and the risk of sleeping on the mountain was not going to stop me. So I pressed on and what a great choice that turned out to be. I found myself in the midst of these tall magnificent structures. To one side of the path, a massive chasm filled with sandstone pillars and on the other side, I was scraping my shoulder against a wall of sandstone as I continued to walk up the path. The path kept going up and up, taking me from one pillar to the next until I reached a viewpoint on top of the highest pillar. I was tired and out of breath to say the least, but it was one of the most beautiful sights I had ever seen. I spent some time here, relaxing and enjoying the freedom of being on top of the world. It turned out that I had passed a path, about 100-meters back, which zig-zags over the mountain leading to another tourist scenic spot and a viewpoint on the most north-western side of the mountain. I realised that I had just hiked from the most eastern side of the park all the way to the other side. I followed this path to the lookout point which was beautiful, but incomparable to the beauty I had just discovered moments before. After that, the path led me down, through a smaller subtropical forest and to the bus stop that would take me back to the Golden Whip Brook trail. My advice would be to make sure that you get off this bus before you reach Yuanjiajie Scenic Area so that you can take the path down the mountain and back to the Golden Whip Brook bus stop. From there you can take a bus back to the park entrance.
That first day I spent in the park was one of the best hiking experiences I’ve ever had, and I recommend this day hike to any person who likes hiking and experiencing Mother Nature at her finest. It truly felt like I had spent the day in the Garden of Eden.
In my next blog, I will give you the perfect hiking routes to discover on days two and three of your stay at the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park.
The Extreme Sports Traveller 