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Team building, two words that can strike dread into the heart of any employee. When we were told that the school was taking the entire staff on a trip to TaiBai Mountain there were mixed feelings; on
one hand free holiday, on the other hand organised fun. The few days that followed were a mix of mayhem, literal uphill struggles and incredible views.
"Yesterday was the source, today is the flow"
- 宝鸡 Bronze Ware Museum wisdom
At 5am on a Tuesday morning we arrived at our destination BaoJi 宝鸡，a city a few kilometres outside of Xi'an in Shaanxi province. Our itinerary for the trip was made up of hiking a mountain, seeing a temple, and visiting a bronze ware museum; but straight off the train we were herded onto a bus to be lectured in Chinese, without translation (something that would become increasingly annoying throughout the trip) and driven straight to the main attraction TaiBai Mountain 太白山.
You might imagine that at 5am and after a night of very disturbed sleep aboard a train we weren't in the mood to climb a mountain, but it turned out we were all pumped for the day of adventure and us foreigners
— along a couple of Chinese staff
— even decided to forgo the cable car in favour of hiking the mountain. What a trial that would turn out to be...
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| The struggle is real... |
Before we got to the actual hiking portion of the day we were driven up part of the mountain, stopping at various scenic spots to soak up the beauty and before long we were watching sunshine and lush trees turn into snow covered evergreens. We had been told it might be cold at the top of the mountain, but we'd also been told it would be hot so the warnings hadn't exactly been heeded; some in our group had even left their coats on the bus. After jumping out of the bus and into ankle deep snow I slightly regretted my decision to wear converse but figured some vigorous exercise would soon sort me out, it was climbing time!
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| ...very real |
Before we had set off I had said the I didn't mind a 4 hour hike scrambling over rocks and up slopes, so long as it wasn't steps all the way up the 2.5 km vertical distance. But, guess what...steps, so so many steps. When it finally dawned on us that we had committed to climbing what felt like a million steps horror set in. What had we done? To add insult to injury these weren't just simple steps, these were steps than were covered in so much snow that they were pretty much a slippery ice slide...that we were walking
up.
I never knew that a 2.5 km walk could be so painful, at times I thought I had somehow transformed into a 70 year old man with a history of heavy smoking, but amid the struggle we were constantly surrounded by amazing views that wouldn't look out of place on a Christmas card. Snow covered branches partly hiding the views of the snowy wonderland below us. After what felt like a lifetime of climbing, which in reality was only two and a half hours, we reached the top of the cable car route.
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| Victory selfie at the top |
We were exhausted, wet and cold but we had made it. Most of the group decided that enough was enough and headed down the mountain via cable car, but Jake, Becka and I continued onwards and up towards the summit. Our original plan was to just walk a bit to see what was over the next ridge, but as one ridge became 4 we knew we had to make it to the top; and my god it was worth it. Almost 360 degree views across the mountains met us and at 3300m the views were incredible. The cable car down was a perfectly serene end to an epic journey up an icy mountain, being able to look over what we had just climbed and conquered put the journey into perspective and was the perfect end to the adventure.
No matter how hellish the journey I'm glad that I took the road less travelled, glad that I'd had the struggle to get to the top which made me appreciate the beauty even more, and glad that I had good friends with me to keep me going when I felt like I was going to die. Had the journey to the top been easy I may not have felt so proud to have reached to top, and I definitely wouldn't have such a good story!
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