Our trip to Xi'an included a visit to Mt. Huashan. This was the terrific surprise of the entire trip to China. I found this excursion on the Cycle China website. Cycle China is a bit more geared to active travelers than the China Highlights company we actually hired to guide us.

Tina, our Chinese guide, has been taking foreigners around Xi'an for three years. She had only visited this site once while had gone to the Terracotta warrior museum over 300 times. We convinced her to join us on the climb to the top of the 'mountain'. She was excited to do so because she was unable to join the other party do a mix-up in scheduling.

A tour bus took us up the first thousand. From there we took a spectacular cable car ride – Asia’s highest lift - half way up the 7,000 ft. Mt. Huashan, and spend a few hours hiking up the carved stone stairs to the summit. The views are stunning, with many temple shrines (mostly female deities) built in caves along the thousands of stone-carved steps, which also make it impossible to get lost. The precipitous granite cliffs have the majesty of Yosimite Park, but this is more amazing for its feeling of human-will. The steps that were carved into the granite were done so hundreds of years ago. This shot is of a Taoist temple and monastery dedicated to the “White God of the West” that rules the entire mountain. Mt. Hua.

I was a bit disappointed that the Taoist monks that maintained the monastery did not let me take their picture.