Waterfalls, Cliff Walls, but No Falls!

June 21, 2009

I am losing track of the date here in China...I had to ask my friend Marilyn what day it is today.Anyway, YESTERDAY, on June 21st here in China, we got up and enjoyed another traditional breakfast in the hotel dining room....this time the Tang was only room temperature not steaming hot, so I filled my glass.Our guide (who works for Always and Forever Adoption Homeland Tours), escorted us back to the tourist bus where we once again scanned our thumb prints and compared them to yesterday's tickets (I learned that a national park pass is good for three days). Our destination was the top of LuShan where there was access to an even more spectacular waterfall.

We rode in glass-enclosed gondola cars suspended high above the gorge...I took some great video of the clouds and mist first filling the valley below, then being puffed away by some great breath of air. We LOVED the gondola cars, and I was grateful that I had lost 15 pounds prior to our trip because the cars did not STOP to let passengers on or off....you just jumped into the moving car while simultaneously ducking your head to avoid the steel doorway, and clinging to your camera bag so you did not trip. Had I been 15 pounds heavier I may have been even less graceful than I ended up being.On the top of the mountain, Coby pointed and said "the waterfall is just down this trail". HA...he has a talent for understatement. "Just down the trail" must have been at least 200 steep hand-railingless stone steps away! But waiting for us at trail's end was, not only the most beautiful waterfall we had seen yet, but a clear, icy pond surrounded by cement steps upon which we could sit and dangle our feet into that refreshing water. We sat there for at least half an hour...I for one did not want to leave. Finally, we all sighed and began to put our shoes back on. It was at that point that Coby gave us both the good news and the bad news.

I could have stayed here all day dangling my feet in the cool water.

First the bad news.....if we wanted to get back to our bus we would have to climb back UP those 200 plus steep stone steps. Next, the good news (or was it even worse)....if we did not want to climb up 200 plus steps, we could scale a 320 foot tall vertical cliff wall, using only a rope threaded with wooden slats for a ladder. The vote was for what I now call The Ladder of Death. Of course before we could access the Ladder of Death, we had to (you guessed it) climb more steep stone steps. Once on the launching platform, we were each tied to a belay line attached to a sturdy (I hope) rope hanging from the top of the cliff where another attendant was waiting to help off the ladder and onto terra firma.We lined up, put on our secure harnesses (HA), and clipped our belay lines in place. At first I took each step one leg at a time, and at a fairly brisk pace. But after about 20 ladder steps, I started to put on foot on the rung, bring the next foot to the same rung, and repeat the process. After another 20 or so steps, I began to put one foot on the rung,then use my arm muscles to PULL myself up to the next rung, stand on the rung for a while until my leg stopped quivering, then repeat the process. Well, I made it, and so did we all. Marilyn, Paul, and I are all between 57 and 58 years old....we won one for the Geezer!!!After we sat for a while, Marilyn turned to me and asked if I was worried that Hannah would fall. I said, oh, I was worried that any one of us could fall, but at least our belay lines would save us. Marilyn looked at me quizzically...."You didn't see,, did you?". See what? Oh, after about 1/3 of the way Hannah's line came unclipped and she was climbing without anything hooked to her harness. OMG......God was surely with us.Although Coby has promised that the return to the tour bus would be "a straight walk once we get to the top of the cliff", once again he was a master of understatement. I'm not actually sure if we saved any steps at all by going up the cliff, but the promise of a shorter hike back to the bus prompted us to take a rish we normally would never have take, so maybe that was the goal all along...it makes for a great story anyway.More later, Cathy=============

This is the view looking straight down the 320 foot tall cliff wall...we all climbed up this slatted wood and rope ladder to reach the top. The bottom of the cliff is shrouded in mist.

(Left) This is the view from the bottm of the gorge looking up at the rope ladder we will use to climb back to the top of the mountain. Yikes!