13km of frozen steps, a night at the top, then 15km of frozen steps back down.

 

The hotels at the summit were full of Chinese tourists but the only other people on the steps were local porters carrying huge loads up to the hotels. One guy went past with 24 big bottles of coke on each end of his bamboo pole. By my sums that’s 60kg - a crazy amount to carry up those steps given that there was a cable car running to the top up the other side of the valley!  

 

Why fill a cable car with bed sheets and coke bottles when you can fill it with big city tourists and pay a few yuan for a peasant to run up the hill with the load instead? I took pity and gave my hat to an old guy carrying two huge sacks of vegetables. He asked if he could have it. His sweat was freezing solid in his hair.

 

JL