Climbing Mount Huabao

The Qilian Range stretches for hundreds of kilometers, like a natural Great Wall, separating the Tibetan Plateau from the Gobi Desert and China’s Loess Plateau. With peaks close to 6000 meters, it is an alpine wilderness where, if you’re lucky, you can catch a glimpse of the “ghost cat”, the elusive Snow Leopard. Mount Huabao, with its five peaks that rise just shy of 4500 meters altitude, is located in the Southern Qilian Range. It is not very popular with tourists, and the secondary peaks are rarely climbed. The landscape changes from the base of the mountain, where forests and shrubbery are intersected by mountain streams, climbing higher to alpine meadows where yaks graze and wolves roam, and culminating in the highest points with glacial valleys and jagged ridges and peaks. There are no tourist paths, and information found on internet is minimal, making hiking on Mount Huabao a challenging orienteering experience, therefore a GPS backed by topo maps and a compass are essential. We started the ascent on the north side of the mountain, from a lake called Dashitan. The north side is much more demanding, with a 2500 meters relative altitude, but much more beautiful. The first part of the climb follows the course of a river that flows through an old glacial valley. On the first day we passed by a farm and climbed to 3800 meters altitude, where we set our camp for the night. A shroud of mist enveloped our tent just before we settled in, but later the sky cleared and we enjoyed a warm and pleasant night, the best I ever had at this altitude, nestled on a pass, between some rocks, with the high peaks on one side and deep valleys on the other, billions of stars and a brilliant Milky Way hanging above us. The next morning we left our camp behind and decided to do a light and fast ascent of one of the nameless high peaks. We followed a secondary ridge, avoiding the snow and rock avalanche prone glacial circles. The climb was a difficult scramble, but there was no need for technical gear and by noon we were enjoying the glorious view from 4449 meters altitude. The permanent ice and snow, that only decades ago covered the mountain year round, is now reduced to patches on the north faces. During the descent we had the chance to make some friends at 3000 meters altitude. They were a group of locals looking for Cordyceps Sinensis, colloquially called “caterpillar fungus” in English and Yartsa Gunbu in Tibetan, which literally translates as “summer grass, winter worm”. Reaching the base of the mountain we were invited to have lunch at the farm that we passed by on our way up, and again by the guard at the gate on the edge of the lake. We were full, but the local hospitality is not something that can be avoided and the only payment they accepted was a promise that we will visit them again, which we plan to do in the future. #hiking #outdoor #adventure #mountaineering