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Yangshuo Day 07 – White Mountain & The Egg

White Mountain

White mountain is a massive crag that is about 200 metres long. The crag has a myriad of climbing routes to choose from, although they tend to be fairly sustained climbs and lean towards the more difficult grades. More than half of the routes that you can find there are graded at 7b and higher, but there are a couple of routes for beginner climbers that are around 6a.

Getting There

To get to the crag, you need to make your way to the small village of Zhoushang (Mandarin : 洲上). The best way to get there is to head in the direction of the much larger town of Puyi (Mandarin : 普益乡) first, but turn right about 9 kilometres in. Soon after you turn off the main road, you'll come up to a t-junction where you need to turn left as the right branch leads to Yansi (Mandarin : 岩寺). Then head down the road for 600 metres or so to reach Zhoushang.

That morning, the taxi (CNY8 per person) drove us to Zhoushang and the driver told us to walk in from there. We continued to follow the occasionally muddy path that led south past bridges and large swathes of farmland. Vegetable plots and gardens were abundant here and swifts flitted around above our heads. Eventually the massive crag appeared to us on our right. We slowly looped around the crag and approached its south face from behind. From there a path led straight to the wall. The crag, like most of the crags around Yangshuo, is fairly remote and does not have shops or eateries anywhere nearby, so we had purchased some sticky rice (CNY11) for lunch beforehand.

The massive (not quite white) wall

The further to the left we went, the more overhanging the rock became. This did two things: it kept the rock fairly dry, but at the same time significantly increased the difficulty of the routes. The routes became easier the further to the right we went, but those routes tended to be gunky and fairly slippery with a lot of them passing through darkened slimy streaks in the rock. My medial epicondylitis had yet to subside so I made it a point to stay on the easier routes and to give my elbow long rests in between. That gave me lots of time to explore and observe the local denizens..

Ian doing his best to avoid the darkened streaks

Next : Yangshuo Day 7 (Part 2) - Long Legs