So confused

02.01.2016

It started to dawn on me that we weren't going on a day hike after our driver brought us to the peak to watch the sunrise. I thought Mumu was carrying way too much food for that, but I've seen Chinese people hike before, and she had less than them. So, I disregarded this essential hint.

Anyway, we drove up to the peak at about 7 a.m. and watched the sun come up while battling dangerous winds that could quite possibly fling us off the cliffs. I suddenly understood why we had to register our passport information before we went up there. It was clear that not everyone came down the same way they went up.

Mumu gave me hot paws to put in my shoes and stick on my back, but with that extreme wind, it hardly made any difference. I was frozen stiff after about 30 minutes and I went in the van to munch on my breakfast of beef jerky alongside the driver while Mumu had the time of her life jumping around the cliffs oblivious to the danger of getting blown off like a kite.

Next, our driver brought us to a trailhead of sorts. After he let us out, and drove away (with all my stuff) Mumu showed me her phone and it said "We might sleep here tonight". Um... what? All I had was water and hiking snacks! I thought we were going back to the same hotel after a day hike. That little hint that I noticed this morning would've been useful, if I acted on it. I was definitely not prepared for this.

"Why didn't you tell me before?" I wrote in her translator. She wrote back to me that I could go back later to the hotel at any time. I was really sad and bewildered that she would neglect to tell me this would be a sleepover hike until literally SECONDS after it was too late to prepare properly. My god.

I left her behind me and took out my rage on the steps going up the mountain to the temple. When I got to the top, the hotel looked comfortable, so I told Mumu I could stay, even though I had no toiletries, etc. She seemed to understand but she had other plans again. We weren't staying at this hotel, no way.

We kept on hiking past the temple into the desert. We met a tour group and filled up at a small hut that had hot water before our ascent. It was a medium sized mountain and I knew I wouldn't have a problem getting to the top. I wasn't sure what I would do with the sweaty, damp clothes I would be wearing and would have to sleep in afterwards however. Ugh.

I tried to keep a positive attitude and took way too many pictures of the same mountain range. It looked different to me each time I stopped, but I guess in hindsight, it wasn't.

Some guy on his way down stopped us on our way up and gave us partially broken crampons, which we wore one of each. I'm not a fan of these things, but I wore them instead of carrying them or arguing with Mumu about them. I had the broken one on my right foot and Mumu was trying to coach me up the mountain by telling me not to step on the 45 degree slope of glistening ice. Thank you Mumu, but I think the Canadian might know a thing or two about hiking in snow This proved to be a difficult point to communicate, so I just said "OK" every time she gave me some more useful pointers. Sigh. I wished she was this helpful when we were preparing for this hike, I thought to myself the whole way up.

Anyway, we continued on up to the temple at the top and it was so windy that I dropped my phone in the snow somewhere along the way. When I realized this, we called it, but no one answered. Poor little phone, abandoned on the mountaintop. Maybe one of my friends will get a call from it when some other hiker finds it and picks it up. By then, I'll be long gone and that hiker will also abandon my phone because it's a cheap piece of crap. The moral of the story is: always buy cheap phones and don't get attached to them because you never know when you'll drop them in the snow.

The top of the mountain was just as blustery as the first one, but I felt I had deserved this mountain more than the last one. I had reached the summit before Mumu, so I went back and searched in vain for my poor little phone until I met Mumu coming up.

We had our snacks and basked in the sun like little cats. I suppose Mumu charmed our way into someone's car, because a bunch of strangers piled us in their SUV and drove us all the way down to the bottom. They even pointed us in the direction of a "hotel". I know, this is not the purist way to hike a mountain and I felt I could have made the descent myself without any huge problems, but the car was warm and I was drenched in cold, damp, clammy sweat, so I said nothing and just enjoyed the ride.

Since Mumu used the word "hotel" instead of "binguan", which means family-run guest house, I assumed we'd at least have a warm shower to look forward to. The guy who drove us down the mountain introduced us to the owners and brought us to their stone-walled farm house in a valley. There were no floors, just concrete, and the whole place was heated with coal. There was also no running water at all, and you had to poop in a hole. I was once again bewildered.

"Are there showers here?" I typed on Mumu's phone. "No have," she said. "Don't you want a shower?" I wrote. She shook her head no and said she didn't know about this shower business before we came here. What the crap were you talking about for so long with those people in the car then? I thought. I also kept these thoughts to myself because it's easier than typing them out in a crappy translator app that doesn't work.

When I asked to leave, the owners said they could drive me to town, but that would cost 50 yuan, the same as if I just stayed here for the night. I was defeated, so I stayed.

I tried to dry out my only socks and whatever clothes I could spare on the coal-fired stove in our room with its rammed earth bed. As I was snoozing drowsily, someone came in and took everything off the stove. Mumu came in and told me not to do that. I had melted my long johns and could have burnt the house down (I thought burning a stone house down was unlikely but anyway...). I didn't care. At least my clothes were dry and no one got hurt. I was only down one pair of tights. Whatever. The bonus was that I didn't have to carry them anymore. Ha.

I was surprised later, when someone woke me up to eat dinner. They brought us homemade Shanxi style noodles and pickled cabbage right to our room. Mumu had even lugged a can of beer over the mountain and we shared that in small bowls instead of cups. I was not very comfortable in my gross clothes, but at least these people were friendly.

Going to the toilet was an affair and a half. There was only a big square hole with two planks to stand on overtop this hole and squat. The hole was filled with excrement, right up to the same level of the planks. It was frozen I guess, so it didn't stink. I would hate to be here in the summer. Terrifying. I went back to bed at 8 p.m. and we woke up at 7:30 to go find my stuff that I left with the driver from the hotel and catch the bus back to Taiyuan.

Sunrise on Wutai Shan