The four of us walked from the Ice Mountain Hotel three short blocks to the gates of Hailuogou National Glacier Park and bought tickets. It costs almost 400 Yuan ($50+ U.S.) for entrance fee, bus and cable car. Hailuogou is the biggest glacier park in China with the lowest glacier in Asia. A fleet of green National Park Service buses were waiting to load passengers and everyone who visits has to show passports or identity cards, not once, not twice, but over and over again.

As the only two westerners on this mountain today, it became frustrating. The inspector would look at the passport, look at us, (video)….look at the passport again and back at us one more time. All right all ready! Mr. Wang threw a hissy fit because the National Park wouldn’t honor his guide pass and made him buy a ticket. With dark looks and loud mutterings from him, the bus…View image… began crawling up the mountain side, switch-backing the entire distance through virgin forest, small little communities, strands of bamboo, rhododendrons, corn fields, farms growing vegetables and waterfalls on both sides until we arrived at Camp #3 with its gondola around one hour later. The day was very cloudy but the clouds did part for a brief period of time allowing us to catch a glimpse of Gonggha Shan, western China’s highest point, 7,556m/21,790′.

Gonggha Shan – “Snowy Mountain” – western Sichuan, China 

Hailuogou National Park map, ChinaCamps 1, 2 and 3 were once actual camps located at the 8, 15 and 22km mark but now have large hotels at each location for visitors to spend the night. Tourists can choose to go see the terminal moraine of the glacier on foot through the forest from this spot or take the cable car (video from the gondolaView image, and large boulders. For us, a identity check again before boarding the ultra-slow gondolas to the top. The gondola deliberately crawls along so passengers can take photos of (what we thought) the not very impressive dingy, grey glacier tongue…View image.

tourists walking on Hailuogou National Park glacier, ChinaThere were other walking/hiking options at the top. You could head uphill past the Gongga Shan worship point…View image…View image… to Glaciers 2 and 3, or downhill, then uphill to Glacier number 1 for close viewing…View image. We were extremely lucky to get a glimpse of Gonggha Shan (“Father Mountain/Snow Mountain”) before the clouds rolled in about 10:00 a.m….View image… and to catch glimpses of the other mountains in the Gonggha Shan Range.

Gonggha Shan and glacier number one, Hailuogou National (Glacier) Park, ChinaThere were many stalls at the top of the gondolas selling different medicinal fungi, mushrooms, dried fruit…View image, dried and fresh yak meat (extremely chewy yak meat), cooked foods, flower heads drying to use in tea…View image, and gigantic mushrooms that were the size of dinner plates used for medicinal purposes.

gigantic mushrooms for sale in Hailuogou National Park, ChinaWe took a short walk in the hot sun before the clouds rolled in at 3,400m/11,143′ still puffing even with acclimatizing the past two weeks. It would take much longer than 14 days to breathe like a Tibetan…if ever…

Sheila at Hailuogou National Glacier Park in ChinaThere is also a beautiful 7km/4mile path through the forest carpeted in moss and flowers…View image… down to the hot springs which is where we were heading. Walking down, the stones were extremely slippery from last night’s rainfall and that put the kiboosh on that. Instead, waited on the road until the next bus came along for the ride to the spa and Camp #2. TIP: July, August is rainy season but that’s when the famous Yushu and Litang horse races were supposedto take place, both non-happenings this year.