Our climbing team had a wonderful ascent of Haba ‘Snow Mountain’ above the village of Haba in the Yunnan province of China. The climb was only 3 days followed by some sight seeing in the historical city of Lijiang. The summit of Haba is 5,396m or nearly 18,000′ so this was not a small climb by any means!
We hiked from the village of Haba on our first day of the trip through the dense forest and along mountain streams then came to grassy meadows as we approached our base camp. By the afternoon we reached our camp and had a glimpse of the peak.
On summit day we awoke at 3 AM and departed camp around 4 AM for the summit. We climbed up the rocky slopes and gained the glacier just as the sun began to rise, where we roped up and donned crampons. We then climbed the snow and ice slopes and reached the top at 10:30 AM. We saw only a few other climbers on our ascent, even though it was a holiday weekend in China. At the summit we found the peak marker and savored the moment before heading down to our camp. The next day we hiked down through the lush forest back to the village of Haba, then drove along the scenic ‘Tiger leaping gorge’ back to Lijiang, where we visited the beautiful ‘old town’ that dates back to the 1300’s and enjoyed a traditional Chinese dinner typical of the Yunnan province. It’s been a great adventure with climbers Scott, Florian, Lloyd and Rafael!
To higher places!
Garrett Madison
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To view our climbing team’s exact route to the summit you can view our RainOn mapping platform here!
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