I recently visited Mt. Tai in Shangong province. Mt. Tai is the eastern mountains of the 5 greatest mountains in China. Actually according to various websites it’s the greatest of the 5 mountains. Mt. Tai symbolizes a peaceful and unified country. Supposedly many emperors would climb the mountain to give thanks for peace and prosperity. Over 70 emperors are said to have climbed Mt. Tai. In folklore climbing Mt. Tai is the first thing a new emperor would do so their reign will bring or continue peace in China.

Not much is published that I could find about the geology Mt. Tai but a couple of pages here and there (or at least in English). But the gist of it is that Mt. Tai is a tilted fault-block mountain that’s higher to the south than the north. According to many websites (that don’t have sources on them so idk how accurate this is), Mt. Tai is an excellent area for studying early precambrain geological evolution in china. Other than that a lot of websites don’t agree on how Mt. Tai was formed and since I can’t find any published papers I’m not going to write something that I have no clue about. There were several signs on Mt. Tai describing the rocks and formations but they were a little chinglishy so I don’t know how accurate they are. Using my geology powers I used my best judgement of what was correct and what was made up.

Anyway it was fairly easy to get to Mt. Tai. I left Sunday night a couple hours after weekend work. As usual I have to switch trains in Nanjing. Since I wanted to be ready to hike first thing when I got to Tai’an (the city at the foot of Taishan) I splurged for a hard sleeper bed over a hard seat. Plus I was curious what the hard sleeper beds looked like. They looked rather boring to be honest. There were compartments up and down the aisle that held 6 beds. On each side of the compartment there were 3 beds stacked in a bunkbed type fashion. Except whoever had the top couldn’t sit up because you would hit the ceiling. So instead there was a fold down chair and small table to sit at in the aisle. I got there first so of course I claimed a bottom bunk. The train wasn’t that full so the only person in my compartment was some other guy. I was happy that I could recognize that he asked me ‘where are you from?’ in Chinese. I can answer this question as well but then he said something else so I was forced to end our one sentence conversation by saying ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying’ or ‘Ting bu dong’. It was pretty late so the train lights went out (something that doesn’t happen in a hard seat car). In the hard seat car the conductor comes around and stamps your ticket. It’s up to you to know when to get off. In the sleeper car (I didn’t realize this until later) the conductor comes around and swaps your ticket for a credit card looking device then comes around in the morning to wake you up.  I didn’t know that’s what it was for so I set an alarm anyway. I sleep really well on moving things but if you’re not magical like me the hard sleeper bed would be a waste of money. My bunk mate snored pretty loud but I came prepared with earplugs. I woke up around 6 and stopped my alarm so it didn’t wake up anyone else. Not long after someone came around to give me my ticket back and told me the next stop was mine.

The bathroom on the train was too small to change into my hiking clothes so after getting off the train my first goal was to find a public bathroom. There’s always one outside the train station and this city was no different. After changing and fending off taxi people I started looking for the bus (bus, 3, 37 or 39) that would take me to the trail head. (I researched what bus to go before hand). Just as I was about to get on the bus I realized I didn’t have any change! So I annoyed a roadside stand that was selling bananas to break my 100kaui note (about 14USD). He made a shooing motion when I tried to get him to break my 5kaui into change. With no choice I when into a convenient shop and bought a cherry coke to break my note into coins. Finally success and I went back to the bus stop. Although the mountain could be seen really clearly from outside the train station, it was a 35 minute bus ride to the closest entrance to the mountain. From there it was a 10 minute walk to the trail head.

There are several routes up mount Tai. I picked the Tianzhu Peak Route. It was supposed be less crowded and offer good views of the magnificent pine trees. The internet got one thing right. There were less people. In fact there were hardly any people. Until the halfway point I think I saw less than 10 people. Starting out I felt slightly lost as I could not find the trail head. All I could find were tourist buses that would drive you halfway up however I wanted to walk. I eventually found the ticket teller and bought a ticket. I was able to translate the sign well enough that the ticket could double as a postcard if you asked the teller . I felt pretty good that I was able to tell the teller to turn my ticket into a postcard! I’m a huge fan of postcards so I took special care not to crush it.

The hike to the halfway point called Midway Gate to Heaven was a great climb! The path in some places was destroyed and required a bit of scrambling on my part but all that mattered was the weather was cool and I could feel myself gaining elevation. I enjoyed turning around periodically and seeing the city disappear. Eventually I couldn’t see it at all and became completely surrounded by towering pine trees. The Tianzhu Route is known for the view of the pine trees and I was not disappointed.

At one point I came to a fork and could not determine which way to go. I ended up picking the wrong one and 20 minutes later ran into some very surprised farmers. They kinda made shooing motions so I figured it was the wrong way and turned around.

Back on the trail I soon started to hear sounds of the cable car so I knew that halfway point was somewhere close.

Yep. I soon ran into the entrance to the cable car. This is the point where the tourist bus will drop you off and then you can continue hiking up or take the cable car. I wanted to hike but all I could find signs that led back down the mountain or to the cable car. After staring at my map for a while someone came up to ask to take a picture of me which of course I agreed to pose for. Since they were getting something from me I tried to ask how to get to the second trail going up. They kindly pointed me in the right direction. This point on the trail was called Midway Gate to Heaven. I think it was very fitting. You could see the top of the mountain looming in the distance. I started to question the sanity of hiking up almost 7,000 steps. Rejoining the trail I was met with a lot of people! They must have taken the tourist bus or hiked up the Imperial Route (which is the traditional route up. I was planning on hiking down this way). There were also a ton of vendors so despite being on the side of a mountain I kinda felt like I was back in town. After getting away from the center the people thinned out and I stopped for lunch. I heard that food was expensive on the mountain so I brought a peanut butter sandwich and some bananas.

After lunch I started having little doubts that I could actually hike up 7,000 stairs. I should also mention that I was caring camping gear. Since there were people camping on Mt. Lushan I decided that I would check out the scene on Mt. Tai. If there were people camping I would join them. If not I had a non-binding reservation at one of the hostels. Since I did not bring any of my camping stuff with my from the States I bought the cheapest stuff I could find off Taobao (it’s like a Chinese version of Amazon). The trade-off of it being cheap was that it was kinda heavy. Considering I spent less than 30 dollars total I felt like it could be worse. However, I weighed my pack before I left and I was carrying about 25 pounds. And I didn’t really have anything besides a tent, sleeping bag/pad, warmer clothes and some snacks. When I started to feel really tired, about three fourths, I figured this is excellent practice for when I hike the Pacific Crest Trail.

Eventually I reached the final stretch. I couldn’t help but feel my eyes get really wide as the steps looked almost vertical. Standing at the bottom of the last thousand (or maybe thousands? I lost track), I could see the South Gate to Heaven in the distance.

Soon it looked to be almost on top of me in the middle of the valley. I knew once I reached the gate it wasn’t even the top! But for now it was my goal to get to get up these final stairs.

The crowd was definitely thinner and many people were resting by sitting on the steps. At first I tried to get the South Gate to Heaven in my view but it was hurting my neck since I had to stare straight up. It was like sitting at the front row of the movies. Since I wasn’t looking up I had to grit my teeth, ignore that my legs where burning and keep going. I noticed on the steps there was a 1200 craved into the stone. I didn’t know if it met that there were only 1200 steps left or I had only gone 1200. I hope it wasn’t the latter.

Towards the top there were a crowd of about 6 people my age who were sitting on the steps. All of a sudden they started screaming, jumped up and straight up ran the last 50 steps. At the top they started high fiving and cheering. They started shouting something to the people that were close and giving them high fives as they passed under the arch. I received a lot of high fives which was kinda weird so I left the area to find somewhere to sit down.

The view from the top was fantastic! I could see hundreds of peaks in the distance.My iPhone is not doing the landscape any justice. From the South Gate to Heaven it’s another hour hike to Jade Emperor peak; the highest point on Mt. Tai. It was about 2:30 in the afternoon so I took my time getting there.

The stairs to the peak were not as steep but I was not looking forward to going down all of them in the morning. At the peak I found a cluster of rocks to lie out on and admire the view. Sometimes I hate having to blink.

Since it was still early I took a brief nap and ate the rest of my sandwich. My phone was in danger of dying so I found an outlet in a bathroom to charge it a little bit. After my phone was charged I started to look for people with tents. I was soon found about 5 people setting up their shelters. 5 people didn’t seem like enough so I found the hostel I had pre-booked just so I knew where it was.

Walking back to the camping area a lot more people arrived so I deemed it good enough and found a vacant patch of grass. As soon as the sun set it started getting a little chilly. I was slightly nervous as the weather called for a 40% chance of rain around 2am and I didn’t know how waterproof my tent was. I figured if it got too bad I would go hangout under one of the many temple awnings or in the bathroom (although that would be a last resort). I was just about to go to bed when a cart rolled by with heavy military jackets. I read online that you could rent one of these jackets to keep warm. Since my sleeping bag wasn’t the best I decided to rent one. They are super stylish. Many of the other people around me also opted to rent one. I could see that a lot of people just spread them out on the ground to sleep. No tent required for them! I wondered what they would do if it started raining. There wasn’t anything else to do so I fell asleep around 8:30 but not before I set an alarm for 4:00. The whole point of this trek was to see the sunrise in the morning. Before I fell asleep I checked my fitbit to see how many stories I climbed that day. I wasn’t surprised when it read 510 floors.

Turns out I didn’t need to set an alarm because around 3am I woke up to hear people talking and walking around. There are two ways to see the sunrise on top of Mt. Tai. The first is to hike up during the day, stay overnight and wake up early. The second is to start climbing at night and make sure you climb fast enough to make it to the top before the sunrise. I chose the first option because I wanted to see the cool geology on the way up. So around 3am I ended up packing up and claiming a spot that I thought would be best to see the sunrise.

To put it briefly, the sunrise was a disappointment. I never really saw the sun rise. It just got lighter. I don’t know if it was due to the air pollution from the city or because there was still a threat of rain. The landscape was still cool in half-lit shadows though. The crowd soon dispersed when it was apparent that the sunrise wasn’t going to be legendary.

I was in no hurry to leave so I watch the shadows get smaller and smaller. Eventually it was light enough where I figured I wouldn’t trip going down all the stone steps. One problem though…. I still had this giant military coat. Looking around I could see people still wearing them and I knew that there had to be a place to return them. I stopped a couple people wearing the coat and tried to ask where to go to get my deposit back but couldn’t understand or interpret their gestures. Not overly concerned about returning the coat (the deposit was a mere 7 dollars) I thought about leaving it on a bunch or draped over some rocks where someone would find it. But then I had a thought; what if I kept it? So that’s what I did. I tied my tent to the outside of my pack to make some room. Then I just shoved the coat in. It made my pack super big and heavier but I was now in possession of a huge military style coat. I have no idea what I’m going to do with it.

After hiding this enormous coat in my bag I took in the scenery one last time and then head down. Going down, especially the first stretch was treacherous. I’m glad I had my trekking poles from home.

There were options to buy canes and poles on the way up but I didn’t trust them as I also saw many canes and poles broken in half on the side of the trail. Using my own poles I felt like a little kid because I would step down one step at a time. As in both feet had to be on each step before going another step. There was no way I was going to fall because I would probably break something. Although falling would be a faster way to get down because once you starting falling there was no way you were going to stop until you hit the bottom.

I got into a pretty good rhythm and was probably about ¼ of the way down when the clouds rolled in. Literally they came out of nowhere. I’m guessing this was the rain was on the radar from the night before. I could hear the occasional thunder rumble in the distance so decided to stop to see what the weather was going to do. Luckily I was by some sort of temple that I took refuge under.

As soon as I got under the awning it started down pouring. After waiting around for a couple minutes more and more people started to huddle under the shelter. It was kinda fun at first but the sky gave no indication that rain was going to stop anytime soon. Since there didn’t seem to be any lightning I decided to keep going. My pants can be converted into shorts so I unzipped them and stuffed my extra shirt in the middle of my pack to keep it dry. I then pulled out my ground mat from my tent and then wrapped it around my pack and myself to make a make-shift rain coat. I have to say that it worked pretty well! The only thing that got wet was my head and my socks but they were more damp than wet. Plus I had an extra pair so I didn’t really care. I’m glad I left the temple because although I was moving slowly due to the slippery steps the tranquility of being alone in such an ancient place was a little moving. I hit the halfway point and the rain had mostly stopped so I took off my tent tarp and shoved it back into my bag.

Since I had come up the Tianzhu Peak Route I decided to hike down the Imperial Route. The Tianzhu Peak Route was mostly dirt path with the occasionally stone steps. The Imperial Route was completely paved with stone steps and after a while I realized it was hurting my feet. Since I had nothing else to do I stopped at the next bench and aired my feet out and changed my socks.  That made all the difference and I made it down the rest of the mountain easily.

At one point I stopped for lunch and ran into an older couple from America who also stopped for lunch. They weren’t the first westerners I saw on Taishan but they were the first to talk to me (I think I saw about 5 other westerners the whole trip). Interesting enough one of them was wearing DeFeet bike socks that I also happen to own. I made a comment on it and it turns out that he works as a bike mechanic. So I ask where he’s from and he says Carbondale, Illinois. As I remember Carbondale, Illinois is on the Trans-American Trail and is famous for its many bike shops. So I ask which bike shop in Carbondale he works at. And I kid you not; he works at The Bike Doctor. Which if you remember, I stopped there when I was in Carbondale when I biked the Trans-American Trail. WHAT ARE THE ODDS!??! Anyway they were going up and I was going down but they gave me their phone number and email address and said to stop by if I’m ever back in Carbondale, Illinois. I still can’t believe it. What a small world!

By now the trail was getting less steep and it was mostly level at this point so I knew I had to be close to the entrance. Interesting enough was the path now was completely dry. Turning around the top of Taishan was completely covered in clouds. Strange to think that a few hundred feet up it was probably pouring but I could feel nothing.

Near the entrance more vendors started popping up so I used their appearance to find some post cards. However I kept getting ‘meiyou’ (that means there isn’t any more or we’re out). Determined to find some I started going stall to stall. Eventually a vendor pulls some super dusty and old postcards out. Thinking back I could have bargained for them as I knew this was probably the only time he would be able to sell them. However I was just so excited to find postcards I bought them for the asking price. So if you want a postcard comment below or message me if you have my Facebook.

At the Imperial Route entrance to Mt. Tai is the Dai Temple. For 20kaui you can walk around. Since I had about 3 hours to kill I took a tour of the inside. Photos were not allowed but I didn’t think it was that impressive anyway. I think I’ve seen too many temples to be appreciative.

It was nearly 5 o’clock and my train left at 6:30 but there was one more place I wanted to check out. Turns out the Daizongfang Arch was .3 miles away when I looked it up on my map so I walked over. It too wasn’t that impressive but there weren’t any photo restrictions so enjoy the photo of it below.

My train ride was about 6 hours back so I got some food to take on the train before heading over to the station. I got a hard seat back to Nanjing. In Nanjing I would hangout until 5:20am until my train to Yangzhou left.

The ride back to Nanjing was really nice as the car I was in was pretty much empty. I was able to sleep most of the way. I got to Nanjing about 1 o’clock in the morning where I then stood in line for about an hour to pick up my ticket to get back into Yangzhou. Then I played the waiting game in the train terminal for about 4 hours. I was so tired that I just curled up on some airport-style chairs and fell asleep until my train left. After I got back to my apartment in Yangzhou about 7 o’clock where I took a shower and napped until I had to go to work for a couple hours. Overall I would rate this trip as highly successful! I can cross another sacred mountain off my list. Only 4 more to go plus many other destinations!

Bonus Pictures below!

Pretty flowers:

Interesting geology: Intruded contact between Allgovite and Zhongtiamen rock body. Trekking pole for scale

Just carrying some water up the side of a mountain. After seeing a couple of these guys I stopped thinking that the water was overpriced.

In the morning, despite signs that said keep off, many tourists climbed up here to try and get a good view of the sunrise.

Bixia Temple on top of Taishan:

The Ten-thousand zhang Tablet:

The Memorial to all the revolutionary martyrs: