If you look at the path behind Darbie, you'll see what we were dealing with. Packed snow and ice covered the trail. Not too big of a deal until we came to the stair portion of the descent. Our faithful readers will remember that the Chinese prefer concrete stair paths to hiking trails on their mountains; this presents a problem during the winter months. After slipping down a few steps, we were fortunate enough to find home-made Chinese crampons! Kendall was eager to slip some on since all he had on the trip were indoor soccer shoes.
Pretty hi-tech. But, they actually did the job; no more slips. As you can see, Kendall's foot is a little bigger than the Chinese average. As we hiked further down the mountain, the snow started to melt and disappear. We eagerly made our way to Mt. Emei's most famous attraction, the monkeys!
These Tibetan Macaques are native to the mountain. There are signs all around the mountain asking visitors not to feed anything other than their special monkey food. We bought a few packs of the monkey food expecting it to last us a good while. Not so. As we entered the habitat where most of the monkeys reside and play, a monkey came over and took all three of our com
plete packets. We didn't even get to open the packets up for the monkey, he took care of all that (check out the picture above, excuse his junk). He shoved all three packets in his mouth, went back to his favorite spot, and started munching. We decided that we might need some more monkey food. Further up the trail a more aggressive monkey, clearly the monkey leader, took our replacement monkey food and growled at as for more. Thankfully, the mountain employs even more aggressive Chinese ladies with large bamboo poles. Here's a video, unfortunately after we just had a scary monkey confrontation, listen to the fear in my voice.
Needless to say, we didn't stay at the monkey exhibit as long as we had originally planned. After watching the ladies whack a few more monkeys, we left, not forgetting to watch our backs. We passed a lot more scenic places on our way down. Waterfalls, blue lakes, and streams all dotted the landscape of the mountain. Here are a few more pictures.
I had to put this picture in black and white, otherwise it would just be a very white blur. At least this way we are supposed to be that white. Below you'll see a pretty cool bridge over some very blue water.
Mt. Emei is the most beautiful mountain that we've been. I would love to return - if the admission ticket doesn't rise - and go all the way to the top where a huge golden statue sits. There are also many monasteries to visit, even the famous Crouching Tiger Monastery. After we were done with the mountain, we grabbed some food and bused to our next destination, Chengdu.
Miles from Leshan to Emei Shan - 21 miles
Total: 1605 miles
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