Huanglong 黄龙

May 2010

We took an early morning flight from Chengdu (CTU) to Jiuhuang Huanglong Sichuan Airport (JZH). It's a 45 minute hop and the view over the mountains is spetacular. I'm not sure if we were flying low or the mountains are just that tall, but it is a little scary. The airport is at 11311 ft / 3448 m, yikes!



The airport is small and new, ie they are still partially under construction. There is a "airport bus" booth right at the exit, and we asked for the C-package of JZH-Huanglong-Jiuzhaigou so we could stop at Huanglong. 100rmb each. Luckily my travel buddy speaks some Mandarin -- we were told to wait until they had 6-7 people to fill a bus. The flights come in threes or so from Chengdu, ChongQing and Beijing, so took about 45 min before we actually left in the mini bus (15 ppl capacity with 10 ppl and luggage)



Drive to Huanglong

The drive to Huanglong from the airport is about an hour and probably 30 miles, but incredibly bumpy as most of the road is still under construction. Highly recommend emptying your bladder before the ride as it was quite painful without having done so.

The road winds through mountains and canyons and really quite beautiful. There are small settlements on the side of the road. Sichuan is close to Tibet so you see prayer flags and Han influences.



Huanglong

We arrived around 10 AM and got tickets for the park (240 rmb) and the ascent on the gondola (80 rmb). We had 5 hours to return to the van in the parking lot at 3:00, i.e. ride up and walk down. Our van had a Chinese threesome then rest were Japanese -- luckily one Japanese couple, being long term Shanghai expats, understood the Mandarin instructions to get back to the bus (until then we went back and forth if we were to be back in 3 hours or at 3 o'clock...)

The ride up was uneventful, but we quickly found that 3000 m of elevation is pretty high and we had to take it pretty slow. We had heard in advance that it was early in the spring and that there had been a drought, so some of the lakes might not have the aqua water that makes them so famous. We did the hike up to the temple near the peak and were a little disappointed, as we saw cool looking but dry lake beds.

However, as we walked up the extra route to the peak, we were met by beautiful and surreal looking blue pools that cascaded down towards the temple. We sat on the platform ledge and enjoyed the amazing view for a while, then continued our walk to the overlook where you can see all of the pools.

Further down on the walk, the pools were more dry unfortunately, but it was a pleasant day and a nice hike. We saw a few more crystal clear pools of water and imagined what the calcified lake beds would be like with more of it. The dry water fall was pretty cool actually.

There are well-maintained wood platforms for the entire length of the hike since the ground and pool walls are pretty soft (though didn't stop some of the Chinese tourists from tromping around for photo ops).

We made it down by 2:30 or so, and grabbed some snacks (I love the tea eggs, hard boiled in tea!) On our way for two hour drive to Jiuzhaigou...