The mountain
Mao'er Shan is the highest point in the entire south of China - 2,141.5 metres at the summit, which makes it the roof of the Nanling range and the highest ground between here and the coast. It stands in the far north of Guilin's territory, in Huajiang township of Xing'an county, about eighty kilometres from the city, on the old Lao Shan Jie ridge line, and its name comes from the shape: from the right angle the summit looks like a crouching cat.
What makes it matter is the water. Three rivers rise on its slopes - the Li, the Zi and the Xun - and because they run in different directions it sits on the divide between the Yangtze basin and the Pearl River basin. The Li that you cruise at Yangshuo comes out of this mountain, which is why it is called the heart of the Li and the root of Guilin's scenery. It is also, incidentally, the reason the mountain is a national nature reserve: the State Council designated it as one in 2003, 17,008 hectares in extent, with three hundred and eleven known species of wild vertebrate and two thousand one hundred and twenty species of vascular plant. Its emblematic species is the southern hemlock, a living fossil that survives on its slopes.
Morning - the climb and the forest
Above a thousand metres there are sixty-eight summits on this massif; above two thousand there are ten, and the summit is the highest of them. The road and the trails work up through four vegetation bands - bamboo and broadleaf, then mixed forest, then the old hemlock stands, then the stunted summit scrub - and the change is the point of the day. The forest here is original rather than replanted, which is unusual in southern China, and the hemlocks are the reason for the reserve: they are slow, ancient, and effectively absent from the rest of the region.
The climbing is not technical, but it is long. The summit sits 1,861 metres above the trailhead, and the upper sections are steep, wet and often in cloud. This is a mountain where you need boots, a layer, and the assumption that the weather will change twice.
Lunch
Lunch near the trailhead or at the upper station depending on the pace and the weather.
Afternoon - the summit, and the four sights
The top gives you the two things people climb it for. The first is the view: on a clear day, the whole karst plain to the south, with the Li running through it to the horizon. The second is the weather itself - Mao'er Shan is famous for four specific conditions, cloud sea, sunrise, mist and rime ice, and the cloud sea is the reason photographers come. The average temperature on the mountain is 12.8 degrees, and the air at the summit carries up to eighty thousand negative oxygen ions per cubic centimetre, which is the kind of number Chinese mountain resorts like to quote and is at least a fair description of how clean it feels.
Two historical layers are cut into the mountain. Lao Shan Jie, the ridge below the summit, is the first high pass the Red Army crossed on the Long March in 1934, and there is a pavilion and a memorial on it. The other is the crash site of a United States Army Air Forces aircraft lost here during the Second World War, which is marked and maintained.
Practical
The road up is long and the day is a full one; we leave Guilin early and expect to be back in the evening. The mountain road is used by the reserve's own shuttle, and we arrange this as part of the transfer. Guests who would rather not make the full climb can take the vehicle to the upper station and walk the last section. Staying overnight at the summit camp - which is how the cloud sea at dawn is actually seen - is possible and can be added to any Guilin programme; ask us and we will quote it separately.
Meals
Lunch
Accommodation
Day programme - no hotel night included.
