October 18, 2014

cloudy. Today's itinerary is Tianmen Mountain National Forest Park. In fact, it takes 3 hours and the train back to Shanghai at 13:16 p.m. Today, I am going alone on behalf of the whole family. My wife has another mission.

Tianmen Mountain, the earliest famous mountain recorded in history in Zhangjiajie, has an altitude of 1,518.6 meters and is only 8 kilometers away from the city.

Leave the Weidi Hotel at 8:00 in the morning and go to the Tianmen Mountain Cableway Station across the road.

Tianmenshan Cableway is the world's longest alpine passenger cableway, with a one-way running time of about 28 minutes. There are a total of 98 cabins in the cableway, each cabin seats a maximum of 8 people, and 57 cableway brackets (including 3 rescue brackets), all of which use original equipment imported from POMA Company of France. The cableway has a total length of 7454 meters and a height difference of 1277 meters. It is one of the few cableways in China with a height difference of more than 1,000 meters. The local slope from station to station is as high as 37 degrees, which is rare in the world and is the largest local slope in China. The cableway is also the only cableway that directly runs from the urban area to the scenic spot.

Since the Second Zhangjiajie International Wingsuit Flying Competition will be held on Tianmen Mountain in the past two days, people who travel to Zhangjiajie want to go up the mountain to have a look, and there are also many spectators who come specially for the competition. Therefore, many people gathered at the cableway station and formed a long snake formation. It took me an hour and 10 minutes to get on the car.

As the car gradually rose, the fog on the mountain became thicker and thicker, and the visibility became very low. Sometimes the car that comes back suddenly appears in front of your eyes and then disappears again.

There is also fog on the mountain, but it is not as thick as the foot of the mountain. Not long after walking along the tourist route, you reached the glass plank road. For 5 yuan/person, rent a pair of shoe covers, walking on the glass plank road doesn't feel much. It's not as scary as it says on the Internet. Maybe people with fear of heights will be afraid.

After passing the glass plank road, you will enter the Ghost Valley plank road. The so-called Ghost Valley plank road is a cement passage built on a cliff like the glass plank road, about 1 meter wide. Tourists are like floating on a mountainside and walking around and enjoying the beauty of nature.

Walking along the mountain and admiring it, 20 minutes later, we arrived at a suspension bridge, built between two cliffs and 160 meters long.

After crossing the bridge, not far from Tianmen Mountain Temple, the end of the eastern line. Tianmenshan Temple, built in the Ming Dynasty, is the Buddhist center in Xiangxi. In 2002, the local government spent more than 80 million yuan to rebuild the ancient temple. The rebuilt Tianmen Mountain Temple covers an area of more than 20,000 square meters and is currently the tallest Buddhist complex in Hunan Province.

After touring Tianmen Mountain Temple and looking at the time, it will be too late to walk back to the cableway station unless you run back from the center line. Fortunately, there is a small cableway with pure seats and no baffles that can be returned to the cableway station and spent 20 yuan to enter the small cableway station. There are very few people taking the small cableway, and they are all in a hurry like me (tourists continue to travel along the west or middle line back to the cableway station). Most of the seats are empty, and there are also items on the seats such as boxes of water and boxes of instant noodles. The seat for two people was suspended in the air, and my heart was empty. No one was talking, just holding a camera and mobile phone to take pictures, but always reminding myself to hold it tightly, and it would be gone if I fell. The mountain breeze blows and the seats sway left and right, which is much more dangerous than the glass plank road, at least I think.

When you get to the cableway, you stand on the cableway and take the cableway down the mountain. See if there is still some time to get off at the cableway station and plan to take a sightseeing bus to Tianmen Cave. When I saw that there were many people waiting for the bus, I asked the people who came back how long it would take to get up and down. It seemed that I could only give up and leave it for the next time. Since I couldn't go to Tianmen Cave, I might as well walk around the Central Station.

On the road of the Central Station, there were several TV stations 'OB trucks and many cameras facing Tianmen Gate and the hosting site of the Second International Wingsuit Flying Competition in Zhangjiajie. Because the fog was too thick, athletes were unable to fly, so they had to suspend the competition and wait for the fog to clear. The cameramen and related staff are very boring. Some are chatting, some are sleeping, some are walking, etc. In order to be worthy of the audience in front of the TV, the host and special guests chatted endlessly into the camera.

After chatting with the cameramen, I learned that the fog has persisted since morning, so it has not opened the store all morning. A few people flew yesterday, and it is estimated that the fog will recede in the afternoon.

Seeing that the fog will not recede for a while, I can only blame myself for not having a good eye. It's time to bid farewell to Tianmen Mountain and come back again when I have the opportunity.

Take the cableway and go down the mountain. It is nearly 12:00 noon when you arrive at the next station.

He returned to the hotel to meet his wife, checked out, and walked to the train station with his luggage. I bought a fast food at McDonald's at the train station and took it to the train. The train left on time and arrived safely at my warm home the next afternoon.