Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Cui Hua Shan - Part 1


A snow-covered bridge near the top of Cui Hua Shan

My friend from America who's visiting me, Taylor, and I went to Cui Hua Shan yesterday. Cui Hua Shan is a mountain about an hour south of Xi'an in the Qingling mountain range. The mountain is famous for its rockslides and massive boulders.

Here is a small excerpt of a (Chinglish) write up about the mountain from Xi'an Expat:
Located 20 kilometers away from Xi'an, Cuihua Mountains landside scenery national Geopark is one of the first 11 Geoparks authorized by National Land Resources Department in March, 2001 and, one of the first unveiled national parks in China as well. In the park, the highest peak Zhongnan mountain elevates above sea level by 2604m with total area 32km2 and is one of the developed fullest from landslide. With its most complete diversity of landslide appearance, most typical structure, most intact, largest scale and highest tourism value, the park is the most unusual in China and abroad, as demonstrated with search by Shaanxi Sci-tech Information Research Institute, well-known as Chinese landslide miracle scenery and geological museum.

It was recorded in records on kingdoms in the early stage of West Zhou Dynasty that at the second year (B.C.780) during the You King period of West Zhou Dynasty there had been a great earthquake in the three valleys in the middle part of Shaanxi. And in the year the earthquake resulted in rivers dried and Qishan plateau collapsed. The same record can also be found in 'On historical events' by Si Maqian, an ancient scholar of the Dynasty. It is by inference from literature records on kingdoms in the early stage of West Zhou Dynasty that the Cuihua landslide scenery was caused to from be the earthquakes following.

Read On
Here are a few of pictures I took from the mountain:


Some nice water fall action here


Cui Hua Shan's narrow path winds through thousands of boulders


A path with the peak above covered in clouds


A frozen lake amidst clouds


I love this photo. A man video taping a rooster at the bottom of the mountain.

1 comment:

andy said...

that looks awesome!