How to get there:
This mountain is located 3-4 hundred kilometer south-west of
Beijing. There are several travel options, one may take a train
or a scheduled express bus. I travelled by rented car (with driver),
The travel time in this case would be around 4 hours from the
outskirts of Beijing.
There is a large parking area and ticket office located near
N38.89435, E113.65142, elevation around 1350 meter. Note that people
that are 60 years or older are admitted free of charge.
Route description:
The first bus, green in color, will take you up into the higher valley.
One should not take this bus to the end stop, but exit immediately after
the road has a major fork. This is near location N38.98571, E113.56877,
elevation just over 1600 meter. Walk and take the first side road that
goes right, in about 300 meter you should find a new bus station with
several grey mini buses. There is also a ticket office here. Explain
that you want a bus to the North Terrace, the highest mountain peak
on Wutai. The ticket (2024) is 70 yuan. Even older people must pay this!
The bus will leave as soon as the driver is happy with the number of
passengers, typically when (almost) all seats are taken.
This bus will drive back down to the main road, turn right and drive through the
small villages, then climb to a col at location N39.05619, E113.65677, elevation near
2520 meter. Here, the bus will enter a (restricted) mountain road, slightly more
rough. This road will end very at the summit in a parking area just next to
the temple area.
The summit area is pretty flat and also occupied by some of the temple
buildings. There is a separate summit marker,
standing in an open area.
This point is located at N39.08029, E113.56764. My GPS measured 3063 meter,
but it is almost certainly correct that this elevation is as stated
by Chinese autorities, 3061 meter.
One should return with the same bus, the driver will typically inform
that he will start back about 30 minutes after arrival.
There are several (small) temples on the summit that one can visit
while waiting for the return drive.
The round trip bus travel from the parking lot may easily take about
4 hours, a bit depending on how well things connect. Thus, one should
allow about 5 hours for the trip starting and ending at the parking area.
Comments:
We started from my apartment in Langfang (south of Beijing) as agreed
at 0500. Still dark and only light traffic. The highway system in
China is very impressive. Big, modern 4-lane roads everywhere. There seems
to be almost no road repair work, everything looks well maintained and
in good order. The car navigation system predicted arrival around 0840, we
will see how accurate this turns out to be.
We arrived at the parking by 0900, so pretty good. The next thing was getting
a ticket. It turned out as I have already experienced several times
that people 60 years or more typically are admitted free.
They needed to write down data from my
passport, I used my ID-card, this worked fine.
The main challenge with this trip is to
figure out which bus to take and where
this bus leaves from. Hopefully, my description above will make this easier.
I took the first bus to its end stop. This was a mistake. After asking around
(nobody speaks English), I got on a second bus that took me back down the valley
to the correct bus stop for the mountain bus. I bought a ticket for 70 yuan and
once the bus had filled, off we went and no more issues until I got off at the
summit.
Despite the fact that people must park and ride a bus up into the valley, the roads
up there had major traffic jams.
There must be thousands? of exceptions to the
no drive rule. I observed several parking lots with hundreds of cars. The bus progressed
at snails pace on the main road due to hundreds of normal cars.
The weather was not nice, rain and fog - almost zero visibility. I walked around and
found the highpoint marker. Next, I walked a short loop around all the buildings.
It certainly looked as if the terrain went down-slope all around. Returning to
the highpoint marker,
An information sign, in English!,
explained that this mountain is
named Beitai, Wutai is the name of the whole range.
I next went to have a look at 3 different temples.
They all appear pretty similar for my eyes.
This ended my summit visits. The bus took me back down into the valley. I asked to
exit just before it turned left off the main road. A short walk down towards
the main road intersection, led to a bus stop. In a minute, a green bus came
down the road, I gave signal and it stopped. This bus ride was pretty quick and
I was back at my car/driver in the main parking area around 1345.
An equally long drive back to Langfang, just south of Beijing, arrival
at 1800, a 13 hour trip.
