Wugong Mountain is in Jiangxi Province. This is one of China’s three great mountains south of the Yangtze River. The view of the alpine meadows is spectacular. One I have not seen on other hikes.
I took a super long metro (over an hour) to get to the high speed train station. From there the three and a half hour train and shirt car ride put us at the hotel at the base of the trail. The next morning we hiked.
We hiked 2 hours through the bamboo forest.
As we climbed higher it began to change to alpine forest then alpine meadows.
Eventually we emerged on the alpine meadows. We walked up and down through the meadows to where we stopped for lunch.
A few more hours of hiking up and down through the hills we reached the golden peak. Here you are surrounded by fields of tall grass that turn golden in autumn. They were just starting to turn but not at their full colour yet.
There were also quite a few temples at the top including this Taoist temple called the fairy temple.
While we were hiking the weather changed dramatically with a lot of wind, some rain, and the clouds taking over. Every turn brought different weather conditions.
Another hour of hiking and we arrived at the tents we were to stay for the night. An earlier festival had been rescheduled for this weekend.
We hiked 18.8 km and covered much elevation. There were rough shower and bathroom facilities but grateful to have any!
The next morning some of us tried to capture sunrise but there were a lot of clouds.
We had breakfast, returned our sleeping bags and mats then started the hike down. Downhill is not my favourite (my knees are starting to hate that). There were many very steep sections in the meadows to get through.
The hill was called desperation hill. It spanned 1300 meters and we were all pretty desperate just to get to the bottom.
There were many rocks to maneuver over. Just when I thought it was so tough were saw this man carrying the drinks they sell near the peak. Carrying that much weight is a feat.
A landslide from 4 months ago destroyed much of the pathway and we had to find our way over and back across the stream which was still flowing around all of the debris.
At the end, we were picked up by a car and driven to the hotel we stayed in the first night. A nice shower, late lunch, and playing with the puppies that resided there was a nice end of the day before taking the train back.
