This trip was quite the adventure, even if just a short one cushioned with plenty of traveling time. We spent 11-16 Jan in the Sichuan Province with the ultimate aim of scaling Mt. Siguniang. It was a great trip all round! Especially now that I think back about it in relatively comfortable settings.
My travel buddies were HY and JY, both great friends and great photographers. As I'll be relying heavily on their shots to tell this story, I'd like to give large credit and thanks to both of them! They are the reason I actually appear in many of the photos here and also how I ended the trip with a trove of potential profile pics to choose from haha.
But really, those breathtaking views under the vast
blue sky were worth the bitter cold and equally breathtaking climb. Truly the kind of experience worth having, and hiking is pretty fun after all!
Planning and Preparations
To rewind a little, Mt Siguniang, literally "four sisters mountain" has four corresponding peaks. We'd planned to summit Dafeng peak (大峰), the "eldest sister" which at about 5025m is the shortest and easiest one. [The "youngest sister" had one heck of a growth spurt to 6250m, so I guess seniority has nothing to do with height hurhur.] Base camp stands at an elevation of 4300m. But the whopper came midway through planning when we found out that temperatures would
reach as low as -21 deg C on the mountain.
So of course I was slightly concerned about all this. Physical fitness wasn't a problem, but I couldn't really see how to train for the altitude and that kind of cold. The highest elevation I'd ever been before this trip was something like 500m. As for coldest... well there was that one climbing trip on exchange which included camping at -5 deg C. Even though I distinctly remember that trip being "way too cold to be fun", it at least provided some basis for extrapolation. Training-wise, there was nothing much to do other than go up and down my block with a weighted pack over Dec 2018. That period was also spent cobbling together my best protection for extreme cold and getting really hyped up for the trip. In no time, 2019 swept in and it was time for some climbing of a different sort.
Prologue
After an uneventful flight and first night in Chengdu, the adventure really began.
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| Ok la, not totally uneventful. We had the fortune of sitting on the right (left) side to capture a great sunset along the way. |
We took a ~4h bus journey out of Chengdu and got our first taste of altitude shortly after arriving in Siguniangshan Town (aka. Rilong Town), situated at an elevation of about 3200m. That simple stair climb to our room at the hostel's 4th floor somehow managed to feel like a trip to Bukit Timah. But I guess this was to be expected, and I was glad to have been dutifully taking the AMS pills...
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| Nice, welcoming exterior. |
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| Strings of Tibetan prayer flags just outside the entrance. |
We stayed in Tea & Panda Hostel (茶语熊猫) except when up the mountain. Great choice! Because aside from the private bathroom, our room came with HEATED floors and HEATED
blankets. Trust me, these are the loveliest things in the world after showering in a draughty bathroom in the middle of winter. The sheer helpfulness and hospitality of the hostel staff also made it really easy to get things done, including arranging for a guide to get us up the mountain. I guess, no matter how broken or strangely-accented, it helped that we could actually speak Mandarin (and help with translations for some ang mohs). But first we intended to go on an acclimatisation walk, so all it took was a phone call from the reception and a car showed up to take us to Shuangqiao Valley (双桥沟).
Not that we got much done that day as it was pretty late by the time we
got out of the hostel. We ended up on a sort of bus tour around valley
as it wouldn't have been possible to walk even part way (the trail is
30km long), with pit stops for taking photos and getting a taste of the
climate.
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| My first time seeing a frozen lake, and everyone walked onto it blatantly ignoring the "湖面冰薄，禁止玩耍" sign. |
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| With photogs around you get lots of random shots like this. With friends like mine you get lots of other photog-taking-photog shots too. |
Dinner was a typical hotpot meal although we committed some
drastic over-ordering. That night, the guide also came to do a pre-hike briefing-inspection. We managed to convey our intentions to summit Dafeng peak and he proceeded to approve or disprove our individual pieces of clothing. Our tent and sleeping bags got the pass, thankfully. In case anyone is interested, since we've already taken the effort to find out through the use of Mandarin, the climbing permit is obtained at a sort of ticket hall at the foot of the mountain (CNY150 per pax) and we paid CNY500 for the guide and CNY500 for the horse.
Yes, the horse. The horse is important.
The Hike
The guide picked us up from the hostel at 9.30am the next day and helped with getting the permit. And then hike started with... stairs--a gentle but longgg stretch.
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| Terrain 1: Stairs. Useful for some last-minute acclimatisation. |
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| Terrain 2: Snowy slopes. Pretty shady, and the transition to the next terrain was a bit of a surprise. |
The stairs ended at a ticket barrier, beyond which lay a sort of snow
globe scene which was how I imagined most of the hike would look. Nope.
After a relatively short, crunchy climb we emerged onto wide open
meadows worthy of LOTR orc hunting. But as much as I could imagine
Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli racing past, I think we all weren't in much of a mood for running. Remember that we started at an elevation of 3200m at the town. So even though the gradient was kind for most of the approach, probably not steep enough to break a sweat if done at sea level, the gentlest of slopes were enough to get the heart working. At this point, the other two decided to let go of their packs--and here's where the horse comes in again.
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| The sun-soaked start of the rest of the way! |
The horse (which turned out to be two horses, collectively known as 白龙 as it wasn't clear which one the guide was referring to) which cost CNY500 to rent was an essential feature of our hike. Without them I think our chances of success would've been below zero because we'd have collapsed on the starting stairs. We began the hike with only our personal packs as the tent, sleeping bags, tripods and other assorted gear had already been packed into a neat 17kg pack for one horse to take up the mountain for us. The second horse came with a saddle (hmm...) and had a bit of load added to it at the start of the meadows (I kept my pack on as I had no heavy camera gear to manage, so it was pretty ok). And thus, with a sudden surge of energy, we carried on.
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| 白龙 #1, with me for scale. The packhorses there were all of the short but sturdy-looking kind. |
I didn't actually have much hiking experience before this trip, other than day trips around some hilly areas in Malaysia and the UK. So I decided to be cautious as I didn't know where the point of no recovery was and wanted to avoid it completely. Hence I settled for slightly heavy breathing or a safe ~120 bpm heart rate as the limit, especially on sustained slopes. Flat stretches were always welcome for recovery but not so much the down
slopes (all my hard-earned elevation! D:<).
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| Terrain 3: Meadows. Comes with a generous helping of sunlight and elevation. |
The landscape changed as we went, morphing between wide open meadows and grassy dirt
corridors shaded by trees. The views were always a great excuse to slow down and take a break anyway, especially on open stretches with 360 deg unobscured view of mountains and valley. It's worth mentioning that the weather was fantastic, with clear blue skies and such generous sunlight that it hardly felt like winter at all on the lower sections. It got hot as we climbed, so all my extra layers went back into the pack.
Soundtracks of the ascent: Go the Distance from Disney's Hercules and
Elevate by DJ Khalil.
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| Terrain 4: Tree-tunnels and compacted mud. Alternates with Terrain 3. |
A short note on wildlife. No orcs on these plains but yak were
plentiful, and they stared if we passed by slowly enough. Also, the wild
birds and this one cat at the lunch stop were legit
round. Like
balls/beans on legs. It's probably the climate that causes them to store
a healthy amount of fat under a comfy outer layer of fur/feathers, but
still pretty amusing and cute to see.
After the lunch stop, the grassy dirt slopes gave way to rocky paths with random icy patches/streams every here and there. The gradient also gradually got steeper, and conditions became windier and colder.
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| Terrain 5: Scrubby hillside paths. Also out in the open, but much wilder than the meadows and with harsher wind. Back on came the thick purple jacket. |
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| Ice and snow started to reappear, and someone wanted to slide down the stream. |
The final section of the approach was the hardest for me. When we caught up with our guide at the last meeting point before base camp, he told us that we were at about 3700m with 2km to go. The math wasn't very encouraging but we trudged on. By then, I had gotten very hungry twice in a very short time (which is very unusual). I don't know how long that final bit took--it was just rocky step after rocky step--but I was pretty jelly-legged when we finally sighted something that looked like a rock hut at the top of a steep hill...
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| Terrain 6: Rocky slopes and is... is that..? |
We knew that there would be rock huts at the base camp, but it must be emphasised how determinedly we were trying to temper our expectations. I.e. MUST NOT let ourselves believe that that's the end. Thankfully, the final steep climb really led us to base camp and the end of the approach hike. It would've been much less of a disappointment than some kind of deep despair if that hadn't been the case. All in all, it took us a a decent 7h to get to base camp (10am-5pm) and by the time we took a break (stoning on a rock) and pitched the tent in rising winds, night had fallen.
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| Base camp at last and the view from it! |
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| Another shot of base camp, featuring stone huts that we opted not to stay in and our very reliable tent which withstood monstrous winds at night, keeping us warm and toasty. |
Now how do I explain how bloody cold -20 deg C really is. Let's start with clothing from inside out: 2 thermal tops + t-shirt + fleece + cashmere sweater + thick windproof jacket, 2 thermal leggings + waterproof pants, 2 socks + waterproof boots, thick gloves and beanie. Nothing more, nothing less than the entire wardrobe, especially for making a trip to the outhouse in the dead of the night under a sky full of stars. [Very unfortunate that we have no photos of this amazing sight--not even from the pros coz it was "warm and toasty" in the tent. It took a lot of willpower to stay out of the tent and simply look at the sky.] Another indicator was that noodles straight out of a boiling pot took about 5 seconds to go cold.
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| One
final photo taken before the morning. While sifting through the
collection, I found a couple of photos of dinner but blurred as though
the photographer was shivering violently through the shot. |
In the end, I didn't attempt to summit. My internal decision-making mechanism, which had been constantly re-calculating as we ascended into the cold, had put out a roughly 25% chance of a summit attempt by the time we reached base camp. From the research, I knew that we'd be covering a great deal of elevation over a much steeper incline as compared to the approach. Did I mention it was cold? And so when I got this funny, crawling feeling at the back of my throat for no apparent reason, followed shortly by a headache, that calculation went straight to 0%. I learnt two things that night. First, that the AMS medicine really works on me--after faithfully following the plan for one week, that night was the only time I'd missed a dosage (perhaps there was some overconfidence there). Second, that I'm very OK with cutting losses haha.
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| The back of base camp and the summit trail (the left-ish path squeezing through the rock) which was clearly a lot steeper and required some scrambling. |
In fact I was already fairly satisfied with getting to the Mt. Siguniang base camp. With this, the highest elevation I've reached in my life stands at 4300m, more than 8 times any previous high point. JY and HY both attempted the summit, leaving at about 4am in the freezing darkness. They made it to about 4600m before turning back. In the meantime, I stayed warm and toasty in the tent. There were times where in hindsight (and in more comfortable conditions) I wondered with tiny regret if I should've done it anyway. But all I have to remember is -20 deg C and I think no more. Anyway, as I'd been told by multiple colleagues (along with orders to come back in one piece), the mountain will always be there if I ever decide to go back. Though probably never again in the height of winter xD
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| The morning after, with us in significantly more layers than before. |
Later that morning, after the other two had cocooned themselves in the sleeping bags to thaw, we struck our tent and headed down. The descent, though easy on the lungs, was no good for the knees and somehow felt every bit as long as the ascent. It also became a regular occurrence for us to express disbelief upon looking down at endless slopes, that we'd gone the opposite way just the day before. Eventually it took us about 5h to make our way down (10.30am-3.30pm).
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| Plenty of time and opportunity for some mountain modelling. Being obedient yields great profile pictures! |
Near the end of the descent, we realised that of the three phones that followed us to China, the most important one had gone missing. It couldn't be located even after the remaining guides went searching on the mountain, so the exact time and location where it got lost remains a mystery. We did have a slight hunch, though unfortunately there wasn't much chance of going all the way back to base camp to search for it. So this was how we ended up feeling the full extent of censorship and disconnectedness of having no data roaming or VPN in China. I'd downloaded some useful Chinese apps before the trip, but somehow forgot the most important one: Wechat. The thing about getting all our apps from the Google Play store is that there is no way of downloading something new on local wifi. We tried many creative ways to no effect so dammit, things were getting inconvenient. Hotmail still works btw.
Nothing else to report from our time in Siguniangshan Town other than that we over-ordered at the hotpot place for a second time, despite almost halving our order. It's like the mountain ordeal shaved off a fair bit of our appetites. Oh and alcohol was back on the menu since we were off the AMS pills by then. (HY drinks too.)
Post-hike
On the day we headed back to Chengdu, it became quite clear how lucky we'd been in terms of weather because it had started snowing. The winding roads were iced over at some areas and the scenery, green when we arrived, had turned a dusty white. I'm very thankful that we never had to contend with any form of precipitation on the mountain, which means that we really got the best views of the season.
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| Whiteout outside! We'd booked seats on a private-hire car which had to go slow enough on icy patches, so I'd imagine buses would take even longer to get out of the mountainous region. |
Back in the city we made buying a phone (or at least attempting to) our priority, which really put our language skills to the test. Conversational Mandarin with patchy vocabulary works in SG because English words can always be substituted into blank spaces, which is about the best I can do. So props to HY for fronting the phone-buying conversation, scrutinising the specs and all in Mandarin. Eventually the phone was not bought though, as we couldn't ascertain if phones bought in China can be used normally overseas (Google Play straight out refused to open during test downloads). I learnt that app = 软件 that day, though "A-P-P" seems to work as well.
And guess where we went, after happening to spy the vaguely familiar title on Baidu maps. The SG version is called 莱佛士城 in Chinese (I googled)--literally Raffles City, with "Raffles" translated as a name. The one in Chengdu is called 来福士广场, which reveals a lot about their priorities ahaha. It was also so structurally similar that we found all the foodstuff at the basement and ended up having some
麻辣串串 (with emphasis on 麻 and even greater emphasis on 辣), soupless dumplings operating under cover as 小笼包, 炸酱面 and some good ol' Koi/Gongcha to douse the flames.
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| Not too clear but the Raffles City logo can be seen at the bottom. |
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And thus the best of the trip ended, at least for two of us. HY and I parted ways with JY at the airport [she carried on, sans phone, for another exciting leg but that's not my story to tell] and flew to klia2 for an 8h layover before heading back to Changi >.< It was a long time, but it helped slightly to be back to normal Internet accessibility.
It was nice just to disappear into nature for a few days. Also, I now see the draw of hiking trips and sometimes find myself thinking/googling what else I could climb next... I'll be looking for opportunities, for time and space in between real life in the city, just to get out there and experience something like this trip again :)
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| Cheers! |
