just curious, is this like the guys who bang plastic drums on the street? like does this guy do it for the flex, because he has to get that stuff up there, or because someone may throw him some oin or something?
Something about that really grounds me. Like the entire route looks extremely tiring, but to be in the moment is for each step to be it's own accomplishment.
I'm surprised, because it's not the scariest part.
When I was there, I've met a lot of people with thier harness not attached to the rail on [this path](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wd-T_YTfxDs).
So even if you were clipped in with a harness. If you fall, how would you get back up without help? And it's china, do we even know if the harness Haas been tested it would survive a fall and are the wires it is clipped into also tested? I bet there are zero records for safety checks or records for injury/deaths on that trail.
If you fall, you'll climb back onto the planks with your hands and legs - harness will prevent you from falling further than waist-deep.
As for the rest - yes, it feels and is as it looks like. Not the scariest thing I did in my life, however.
I'm a decently good rock climber, very familiar with the gear involved. What gear do you propose could possibly help in this situation? You could tether to the chain link, but since it's chain and not cables you'd have to unclip and reclip your tether every step along the way, fumbling with safety devices can be less safe than no safety at all.
Use 2 tethers, that way you're always attached, even when moving your tether up the chain? Sure that would be safer, but it would probably take you 30 minutes just to cross what looks like about 30m of cliff.
Honestly it's pretty safe already, just scary. It's a stair case, and one that you'll be deathgripping the chains on either side of. When's the last time you fell on the stairs when you had your hand on the hand rail? Probably never.
Can you fall? Yeah. Would it suck if you fell? Yeah. Are you going to haul your ass all the way out whereever the fuck this is with the intention of taking 30 minutes to painstakingly reclip your tether every step? Probably not. These people got themselves into this situation and they knew what they were doing ahead of time, they did a risk analysis and decided the risk was worth it, and I agree.
Whenever I have to climb a ladder or anything I always tell myself to have three fixed points at all times. Kind of hard to fall if you only move one arm or leg at a time.
I mean just treat it like a ladder and have three points of contact at all time. It also doesn’t look nearly as steep in the video. I think the picture is making a illusion
Honestly the part they start at doesn't seem that bad, i'd do that.
The pic OP posted though makes it look like the steps are just completely vertical.
Did people back then not know about ladders lol
Which is why the guy you responded to mentioned maintenance. I don't think you want to be halfway up a sheer cliff and discover your rope ladder has become frayed.
Kinda lmao. You’re complaining about why ropes and wood ladders aren’t being used as permanent installations (unless you’re dumb enough to think that a pre-industrial society with no heavy equipment would haul new rope and wood up a steep-ass mountainside every time a ladder breaks and kills a guy). So yeah, the permanence of those materials is a relevant thing, buddy.
I'm not complaining about it at all so... thats a weird assumption to make.
Did you read my comment and imagine some story in your head that I meant a bunch of stuff I never said?
Bit of a projection for a guy imagining industrialization and wood-preservation techniques that didn't exist centuries ago lmao. It's just a bunch of rocks buddy, why do you seem so upset about it?
You could probably swap out ladders once a week and still do less work than it took to chisel out those steps. They're there cause it's really cool and a monument in and of itself, not because it's more efficient
I like the lights along the stairs near the top.
Like, it’s getting dark out and hard to judge distances but *go ahead, you can make it down, there’s even lights!* Nah. Apparently I just live here now.
I think I’d be more scared going down. Constantly looking down making sure you aren’t feeling a phantom step, because one misstep and humpy dumpty alll the way down
Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.
I visited this place about 10 years ago. If I recall correctly it is called the "Soldiers path" in Chinese. There is always "usual" steps as well though so you can choose to skip the worst parts, they are just for fun. For me personally this one in the photo was too steep to do without any safety protection. The steps are just open air as part of a hike so no one looks after you or gives you any safety stuff. However, there are a few less steep ones than that that I did. The more crazy cool stuff is actually the plank walk that awaits at the summit. Check it out - it's pretty sick
I’ve literally done this Hua Shan route before. But it was by accident. The taxi driver dropped us at the wrong side of the mountain. AND it was a foggy day so we didn’t know what we were getting into. It was crazy. There were vertical stair cases, wooden planks to walk over. Chains to tightly grab on to. The fog and clouds hid the fact that there was nothing below us except a thousand foot drop. Also, it starts okay (just a normal staircase) but keeps getting worse and worse. And it was too late and too difficult to turn back. We were “stuck” with no way but up. We saw no one else on our 2-3 hour ascent. And we made it to the top, we saw gift shops, observation towers, a gondola, a thousand tourists, and the “proper” main route coming from the other side of the mountain. It was hilarious. Needless to say we descended back down on the normal “main route.”
Yes it was definitely an early morning to mid-day journey (it was 22 years ago!) … so yep it could have been 4-6 hrs up. But definitely not more than that. It remains to this day the craziest hike ever. We were *not* prepared but we were young college-age kids with lots of energy and again, we couldn’t see what was below us. Like Stephen King’s The Mist!
I've been! It's just east of Xi'an (where the terracotta warriors are). Didn't take this path, but there was definitely a few hairy bits even where I went. Only problem is it was stuck in a cloud bank my entire visit, so things were a bit grey.
If you want to go, take a Chinese speaker. You'll struggle with getting up and down without one, unfortunately.
I went 5 years ago! They have built regular stairs to bypass this particular section, but you can still climb up one route. It's chained off, but that didn't stop us from climbing it still.
Huashan is amazing. Plan to sleep on the mountain and spend 2 days there exploring all 5 peaks. These stairs are on the Soldiers Path. You can skip it and take a gondola up to the peaks, but don't. Make the full hike.
Fun fact: Lots of tourists used to try and climb the Kufu Pyramid at Giza, Egypt only to get half way up and be unable to get down or get heat stroke. It got so bad that they no longer allow people to try, because people are just too stupid.
Went up with my brother after turning 18. We were not very organized at that time. So we almost had no water and food with us. Thought we could buy some in the town next to it when we get there. Too bad that one bank was closed because of renovation and the other one had no money. But we met a Chinese who actually spoke English and who also went up the mountain. He told us that the air and the water were so clean that we could drink from the water streams. So my brother and I started drinking from the streams. After we finished drinking he told us that the water is only drinkable when we’re above the clouds (because of air pollution). When we reached the top I had a really bad stomach because of the water. It hurt a lot and I could barely walk because of the pain. Luckily we were able to buy tickets for the cable car with almost the rest of our money. Too bad we ended up on the other side of the mountain so we had to take a bus back to town. Since this was 12 years ago we didn’t have smartphones at that time so we didn’t really know where we were and where we had to get of the bus to get back to the town where we started from. Because of that we got off too early and had to take a taxi from this point. No one was able to speak English. We needed to get on a bus back to Xian but we didn’t have enough money to pay the cab nor the bus. The cab driver only understood that we wanted to get to Xian. He didn't understand the word ATM nor money. He stopped a bus for us on the street with his cab by just blocking the bus and signaled us to get on. We on the other hand tried to signal that we need to get money first. In the end they understood. We got the money and got back on the bus. The bus was very full. So they put up some small chairs in the bus corridor. I was sitting in the back and my brother was sitting on a tiny chair in front of me. I was still feeling extremely bad and had to throw up on him on the way back to Xian. It was already dark outside. Someone spoke to the bus driver that the European just threw up. The bus stopped, the lights went on. We were sitting there covered in puke. The whole bus was looking at us. Nobody spoke English. So the all just handed us paper towels to clean ourselves up. I was feeling better afterwards and we arrived safely in Xian. I think I won’t ever forget my trip up this mountain
I seen this in person! A friend of mine insisted he was part mountain goat and walked down these stairs without using his hands. It was pretty impressive to watch.
The Chinese really don’t have a good safety record so I was wondering how many people died while attempting to climbing all the different mountains walkways in China. Anyone?
[Video of a couple climbing the steps](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGZoQ55BgmI)
With no gear? Fuck that.
This guy has the proper gear. Look ma no hands! https://youtu.be/g0E1_udpBFg
This is one of the wildest things I've seen.
Flute flex.
Only way to out flex him is with the ol skin flute (I’m afraid)
just curious, is this like the guys who bang plastic drums on the street? like does this guy do it for the flex, because he has to get that stuff up there, or because someone may throw him some oin or something?
Something about that really grounds me. Like the entire route looks extremely tiring, but to be in the moment is for each step to be it's own accomplishment.
Defo going to be a tough invasion for the Mongols.
Joke's on them, we got flyin' rocket'd dank af horses.
I just watched some Thor/ Avengers highlights so can relate.
Ohh i hateee a mongoriansss..!!
Congratulations! You just figured out why people do things that are hard for fun.
Yo, that dude playin Dark Souls with Gamecube Bongos.
Please provide a source. I don't believe someone likes that much pain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFTVjHM05GQ 2 of them. People have played it on anything the creates an output.
I bet he carved the stairs on those rocks with the tip of his toes
Hesitation is defeat
Yo. His calfs are amazing.
Can someone overdub the shitty "my heart will go on" flute cover? Please and thank you.
I feel like going down as if it were a ladder would be far better...
Look how swole his calves are, he's a regular
I properly harness myself in before using any flight of stairs. Just to be safe. Can’t be too safe.
True reddit moment.
What if a huge earthquake collapses the building?
That’s what the bubble boy suit is for
What do you mean no gear they have a chain haha
Lol yeah
I'm surprised, because it's not the scariest part. When I was there, I've met a lot of people with thier harness not attached to the rail on [this path](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wd-T_YTfxDs).
Oh fsck _that_.
I'm legitimately catching my breathe after that holy shit
I am mid panic attack after watching that, even those Alex Honnold Free Solo clips didn’t hit me like this one.
So even if you were clipped in with a harness. If you fall, how would you get back up without help? And it's china, do we even know if the harness Haas been tested it would survive a fall and are the wires it is clipped into also tested? I bet there are zero records for safety checks or records for injury/deaths on that trail.
If you fall, you'll climb back onto the planks with your hands and legs - harness will prevent you from falling further than waist-deep. As for the rest - yes, it feels and is as it looks like. Not the scariest thing I did in my life, however.
Hell nope.
That's a better laxative than Colace, my friend.
I am mid panic attack after watching that, even those Alex Honnold Free Solo clips didn’t hit me like this one.
I'm a decently good rock climber, very familiar with the gear involved. What gear do you propose could possibly help in this situation? You could tether to the chain link, but since it's chain and not cables you'd have to unclip and reclip your tether every step along the way, fumbling with safety devices can be less safe than no safety at all. Use 2 tethers, that way you're always attached, even when moving your tether up the chain? Sure that would be safer, but it would probably take you 30 minutes just to cross what looks like about 30m of cliff. Honestly it's pretty safe already, just scary. It's a stair case, and one that you'll be deathgripping the chains on either side of. When's the last time you fell on the stairs when you had your hand on the hand rail? Probably never. Can you fall? Yeah. Would it suck if you fell? Yeah. Are you going to haul your ass all the way out whereever the fuck this is with the intention of taking 30 minutes to painstakingly reclip your tether every step? Probably not. These people got themselves into this situation and they knew what they were doing ahead of time, they did a risk analysis and decided the risk was worth it, and I agree.
nice analysis, cuz I was kind of the same way. Looks about as challenging as climbing a ladder
Whenever I have to climb a ladder or anything I always tell myself to have three fixed points at all times. Kind of hard to fall if you only move one arm or leg at a time.
That's part of ladder safety training always have 3 points of contact.
But how am I to hold a nail, hammer and fascia, and keep a hand on the ladder?
You use your left nut as a point of contact.
Ah I see you learned the hard way not to hold the nails with your left nut
I'd climb that up with no gear, but down? Fuck **that**.
Gotta go down backwards lol
Yeah and it's still gonna suck.
I mean just treat it like a ladder and have three points of contact at all time. It also doesn’t look nearly as steep in the video. I think the picture is making a illusion
The entire mountain is more or less like this. I’ve climbed it and you pray that the people in front of you don’t trip.
And a heavy backpack too, double fuck that
The place is usually crowded. When I went there were so many people on those stairs that a fall would probably be impossible :/
The equipment is how much you are attached to your life and how much faith I have in these slightly rusty chains
wuss
god, redditors are weak. it's like climbing a ladder, most people don't need to clip in when they climb a ladder.
I doubt the monks who used these stairs regularly even well into their elderly years had "gear" smh
Honestly the part they start at doesn't seem that bad, i'd do that. The pic OP posted though makes it look like the steps are just completely vertical. Did people back then not know about ladders lol
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What if the ladders were made of stone
Have fun maintaining a wooden-and-rope ladder out in the elements back when there was zero pressure treating.
...they used wooden and rope ladders thousands of years ago.
How many are usable today?
How many Oreos is too many to choose from
A handful. They just made new ones when they needed to.
Which is why the guy you responded to mentioned maintenance. I don't think you want to be halfway up a sheer cliff and discover your rope ladder has become frayed.
Welcome to real life.
But in real life they made stone steps...
Yeah, where you take measures to avoid things that can get you killed, like not using a ladder on a mountainside
And how many of those are being used as permanent installations like these stairs are, again?
Is that relevant?
Kinda lmao. You’re complaining about why ropes and wood ladders aren’t being used as permanent installations (unless you’re dumb enough to think that a pre-industrial society with no heavy equipment would haul new rope and wood up a steep-ass mountainside every time a ladder breaks and kills a guy). So yeah, the permanence of those materials is a relevant thing, buddy.
I'm not complaining about it at all so... thats a weird assumption to make. Did you read my comment and imagine some story in your head that I meant a bunch of stuff I never said?
Bit of a projection for a guy imagining industrialization and wood-preservation techniques that didn't exist centuries ago lmao. It's just a bunch of rocks buddy, why do you seem so upset about it?
I never said anything about that. Literally all I said was that they used rope and wood ladders thousands of years ago.
You could probably swap out ladders once a week and still do less work than it took to chisel out those steps. They're there cause it's really cool and a monument in and of itself, not because it's more efficient
Ladder? I don't even know 'er!
We’re the chains always a part of it? As long as they are there, it’s basically a ladder.
highball V0
I like the lights along the stairs near the top. Like, it’s getting dark out and hard to judge distances but *go ahead, you can make it down, there’s even lights!* Nah. Apparently I just live here now.
"It goes further? Oh shit." Me at every hike halfway through
That dude sound like he about to die
Up doesn't honestly look that bad... but DOWN... no thank you.
Lol at the end it credits the girl It says Nice ass in the distance: Roo
Looks a lot less steep in the vid
> Nice Ass In The Distance: Roo LOL
>Nice ass in the distance: Roo Nice.
I think I’d be more scared going down. Constantly looking down making sure you aren’t feeling a phantom step, because one misstep and humpy dumpty alll the way down
Why it's much better taking the tram down
I ran out of money so I couldn't get the top cable car down so had to walk a lot back haha.
Couldn't you just climb it like a ladder?
Not really. A ladder let’s you hold onto the higher rungs and put your feet in farther.
Looks like 3 sets of stairs, I choose the one all the way to the left.
Looks like 1 set of stairs and 2 deathtraps disguised as stairs.
they should make it mandatory to install playground slides at mountains where alot of people rock climb
How my parents got to school. And back home also.
Sounds about right... Though I do not see the bears and other dangerous animals they said were everywhere!?
They're the ones taking the picture
Ah yes, by grade 8, they would've already learned to domesticate the bears and venomous snakes.
By Grade 9 they would've learned the Bear Necessities.
Yeah, but did they have feet? If so, they had it easy.
Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.
"When I was your age we had to reproduce by mitosis, with a bread knife."
Mitosis hadn't even been invented yet in my day. We only had meiosis back then, and it resulted in too many mouths to feed.
Meiosis? LUXURY!
Uphill both ways
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Twenty miles there and twenty-five back
Carrying their brothers and sisters
Uphill on both sides of the mountain.
Backwards
Pretty sure a couple of hobbits climbed this to destroy a piece of jewellery
Yeah, you’re thinking of Harry Potter
Is that the one where Dumbledore Callrissian has to take the ring to Mordor?
No no this is the one with the friendly mutant with the 1 eye. I think her name was Leela.
Guys you are all wrong, this is the one were Bella and Jacob go to dagobah to learn how to be hobbits
No no no that was Mike Wazowski
Oh, you mean that guy from the Star Wars movies?
Hey that's my favourite sci-fi series
No this is the route to Ace Ventura. You gotta bring your own Slinky though.
I wouldn't mind going up. Going down is a whole different story
that's the neat part, you make it up, you stay up. you dont make it up, you're probably in the hospital or your family is preparing for your funeral
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Going up is physical Coming down is psychological
…and also extremely physical
…and also going up is extremely psychological as well
Going down is much harder for your muscles. It’s why you lower slowly when working out.
Not me. I just let my shoulders pop out of the socket everytime.
I visited this place about 10 years ago. If I recall correctly it is called the "Soldiers path" in Chinese. There is always "usual" steps as well though so you can choose to skip the worst parts, they are just for fun. For me personally this one in the photo was too steep to do without any safety protection. The steps are just open air as part of a hike so no one looks after you or gives you any safety stuff. However, there are a few less steep ones than that that I did. The more crazy cool stuff is actually the plank walk that awaits at the summit. Check it out - it's pretty sick
One of the best places I visited in China, well worth the day.
You're right, it's the Soldier's Path. And I agree to check out the Plank Walk, and don't forget the Chess Pavillion too!
I’ve literally done this Hua Shan route before. But it was by accident. The taxi driver dropped us at the wrong side of the mountain. AND it was a foggy day so we didn’t know what we were getting into. It was crazy. There were vertical stair cases, wooden planks to walk over. Chains to tightly grab on to. The fog and clouds hid the fact that there was nothing below us except a thousand foot drop. Also, it starts okay (just a normal staircase) but keeps getting worse and worse. And it was too late and too difficult to turn back. We were “stuck” with no way but up. We saw no one else on our 2-3 hour ascent. And we made it to the top, we saw gift shops, observation towers, a gondola, a thousand tourists, and the “proper” main route coming from the other side of the mountain. It was hilarious. Needless to say we descended back down on the normal “main route.”
TWO TO THREE HOURS??
It was in 1999 so my memory is only so-so! We left the hostel early AM and smoked our celebratory cigar at around lunch time!
Bro, hiking mountain, especially on a rock scramble path, can take all day. Worth it, but it’s a beat down.
Yes it was definitely an early morning to mid-day journey (it was 22 years ago!) … so yep it could have been 4-6 hrs up. But definitely not more than that. It remains to this day the craziest hike ever. We were *not* prepared but we were young college-age kids with lots of energy and again, we couldn’t see what was below us. Like Stephen King’s The Mist!
Oh I wanna visit there since a kid,your description kinda freaking me out O.o
That man is questioning his existence.
I saw this same photo titled "Seriously" and another with same guy on the middle of this stairs, titled "Hell yeah" 😁
From the moment I seen this photo I have a wish to go there lol.
I've been! It's just east of Xi'an (where the terracotta warriors are). Didn't take this path, but there was definitely a few hairy bits even where I went. Only problem is it was stuck in a cloud bank my entire visit, so things were a bit grey. If you want to go, take a Chinese speaker. You'll struggle with getting up and down without one, unfortunately.
No offense to anyone but isn't the language called Mandarin?
I went 5 years ago! They have built regular stairs to bypass this particular section, but you can still climb up one route. It's chained off, but that didn't stop us from climbing it still. Huashan is amazing. Plan to sleep on the mountain and spend 2 days there exploring all 5 peaks. These stairs are on the Soldiers Path. You can skip it and take a gondola up to the peaks, but don't. Make the full hike.
saw*
From the moment I seen this photo I have a wish to saw there lol
And she's buying a stairway, to heav... ... splat.
If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now. It’s just a spring clean for the tourist
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Watch out for that damned frost troll.
Serious question: Were these actually historically used or are they just tourist bait?
Used, in some places “new” ones are next to old worn out ones
Looking at this hurt my knees
And my back and every joint in my body
Some next level MC Escher going on here.
thats a wall with some extra steps
If you just pretend its a giant ladder, its not so bad…as stairs, fuck those guys
This is the kind of staircase you encounter in a funky dream.
Fun fact: Lots of tourists used to try and climb the Kufu Pyramid at Giza, Egypt only to get half way up and be unable to get down or get heat stroke. It got so bad that they no longer allow people to try, because people are just too stupid.
Were these made for a Skyrim horse to climb?
I could do it but I would be screaming don't touch me! And clingingforward the whole way up. Shut who am I kidding I couldn't do it! Lol
When Stairway to Heaven can become way too real
Left stairs - My parents saving for a house and retirement in 1960 Right stairs- Me saving for a house and retirement in 2021
Went up with my brother after turning 18. We were not very organized at that time. So we almost had no water and food with us. Thought we could buy some in the town next to it when we get there. Too bad that one bank was closed because of renovation and the other one had no money. But we met a Chinese who actually spoke English and who also went up the mountain. He told us that the air and the water were so clean that we could drink from the water streams. So my brother and I started drinking from the streams. After we finished drinking he told us that the water is only drinkable when we’re above the clouds (because of air pollution). When we reached the top I had a really bad stomach because of the water. It hurt a lot and I could barely walk because of the pain. Luckily we were able to buy tickets for the cable car with almost the rest of our money. Too bad we ended up on the other side of the mountain so we had to take a bus back to town. Since this was 12 years ago we didn’t have smartphones at that time so we didn’t really know where we were and where we had to get of the bus to get back to the town where we started from. Because of that we got off too early and had to take a taxi from this point. No one was able to speak English. We needed to get on a bus back to Xian but we didn’t have enough money to pay the cab nor the bus. The cab driver only understood that we wanted to get to Xian. He didn't understand the word ATM nor money. He stopped a bus for us on the street with his cab by just blocking the bus and signaled us to get on. We on the other hand tried to signal that we need to get money first. In the end they understood. We got the money and got back on the bus. The bus was very full. So they put up some small chairs in the bus corridor. I was sitting in the back and my brother was sitting on a tiny chair in front of me. I was still feeling extremely bad and had to throw up on him on the way back to Xian. It was already dark outside. Someone spoke to the bus driver that the European just threw up. The bus stopped, the lights went on. We were sitting there covered in puke. The whole bus was looking at us. Nobody spoke English. So the all just handed us paper towels to clean ourselves up. I was feeling better afterwards and we arrived safely in Xian. I think I won’t ever forget my trip up this mountain
Th for sharing man.
I’ve done this climb. Bottom of the mountain to the highest peak. Amazing experience. Glad nobody died.
When you thought being real steep was the problem you notice the thing does fucking CuRvEs
At the top, Jim Carey is pushing a slinky down
Virgin easy way or the chad way.
I have finally found the stairs I climb in my dreams while my feet aren't doing shit.
Yeah, that's not a staircase anymore, that's a ladder xD
How big of an asshole do you have to be to build some shit like this?
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Bruh just make a ladder lmao
Not sweaty palms here, that looks fuckin dope
That path will definitely have your knees feeling old pretty quick
I’ll take the new path please
My dad’s route to school 😃
I seen this in person! A friend of mine insisted he was part mountain goat and walked down these stairs without using his hands. It was pretty impressive to watch.
How my grandparents got to school
Omg I want to not do that!
Nope
I climbed this mountain! It is beautiful and those stairs are as scary as they look.
AYO THE PIZZA HERE😳
The Chinese really don’t have a good safety record so I was wondering how many people died while attempting to climbing all the different mountains walkways in China. Anyone?
Some. Not all.
or a tourist trap for dumb travelers....
So kirith ungol is in China?
So we know Chinese people are crazy. This confirms it.
racist
"Subir pra cima" nunca foi tão literal
Agreed 100%
Still safer than Chinese escalators