Mount Hua Plank Walk: Huashan's Cliffside Path and the Viral Harness Clip

Mount Hua, or Huashan, rises above the Wei River valley in China’s Shaanxi Province, and its most famous attraction is barely wider than a shoe. The plank walk bolted to the cliffs near the South Peak has become one of the most filmed hiking routes in the world, and Mark Harrison’s point-of-view clip, shared in 2014 as the video of a man who unclips his harness on the planks, is one of the reasons why.

Where is Mount Hua?

Huashan stands near the city of Huayin, about 120 km (75 miles) east of Xi’an, at the eastern end of the Qin Mountains. It is one of China’s five great sacred mountains and has five main summits:

• South Peak (Luoyan Feng), the highest at about 2,154 m (7,067 ft)
• East Peak (Zhaoyang Feng), the classic place to watch sunrise
• West Peak (Lianhua Feng, the Lotus Peak)
• Centre Peak (Yunü Feng, the Jade Maiden Peak)
• North Peak (Yuntai Feng), the lowest at about 1,615 m

A sacred Taoist mountain

Worship on Huashan goes back more than two thousand years. A Taoist shrine to the Western Peak stood at its foot as early as the 2nd century BC, and the Tang emperor Xuanzong made Hua the sacred mountain of the royal family. The hermit Chen Tuan (920–989) spent his last years on the West Peak, and in the 1230s the mountain’s temples passed to the Quanzhen school of Taoism. Since 1998 most of the temples have been cared for by the China Taoist Association.

The Xiyue Temple, dedicated to the mountain’s god, stands about 5 km north of the mountain, and the Cloister of the Jade Spring at its foot honours Chen Tuan. An old temple on the South Peak now serves as a tea house.

The plank walk in the sky

The plank walk is a narrow path of wooden boards, about 30 cm wide, fixed to a sheer rock face on the route between the East and South Peaks. Nearby, the Chang Kong path crosses a near-vertical wall above a long drop. Walkers wear a safety harness with fall-arrest lines, rented at the start for about 30 yuan, and stay clipped in all the way across.

Mark Harrison’s footage gives a walker’s eye view of the boards, the chains and the valley far below. Clip in from the first board to the last and follow the attendants’ instructions; the harness is what makes the walk a thrill and not a gamble.

How to visit Huashan

• Getting there: high-speed trains run from Xi’an North to Huashan North station roughly every 40 minutes; the trip takes about 35 minutes.
• Going up: the North Peak cable car takes under ten minutes, while the longer West Peak (Taihua) cable car covers about 4.2 km in around 20 minutes. Hikers can climb from Huashan village through Hua Shan Gorge, about 6 km to the North Peak, then follow the Canglong Ling ridge towards the higher summits.
• Sunrise: many visitors climb through the night to reach the East Peak by dawn.
• Season: April to October is the best time to go. Book trains and hotels early for the busy May–August season and Golden Week (1–7 October).
• Tickets: entry costs about 160 yuan from March to November and 100 yuan in winter, plus cable-car fares.

Our companion Mount Hua feature follows another hiker on the mountain. For a very different exposed viewpoint, read about Preikestolen in Norway.

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• Baishuitai: White Water Terraces below the Haba Snow Mountains

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