Apr 1, Wednesday, Zhangjaijie

April 1 (Wednesday) - Zhangjiajie

Today was spent in the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, whose mountains were the inspiration for Avatar’s (the movie) Hallelujah Mountain.  We took the two minute ride up the Bailong Elevator.  It is a glass, two level elevator built on the side of a cliff with each level holding about 15 people.  It claims to be the world’s highest of its kind at just shy of 400 meters. Lines were pretty long as only one of the three cars was working. 

Elevator on the side of the mountain

The Zhangjiajie National Forest Park is China’s first national park and is part of the larger Wulingyuan Scenic Area.  In 1992, Wulingyuan was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site.  The area is primarily of sandstone and the most notable features are the pillar-like formations that we saw everywhere. 

In the parking lot we got our first glimpse of how magnificent the area is.  These are "The Generals Lining Up".

The Generals

We had some really awesome views from the elevator as it ascended. 

We also saw the park rangers lined up for inspection.

At the top everyone was trying to get good selfies with the mountains in the background.  You could also get your picture taken by the professional photographers...who had staked out some of the best photo sites almost everywhere we went.

The Southern Sky Column (3,540 Ft) has been officially named the “Avatar Hallelujah Mountain”.  The pillars of the area were the inspiration for the floating mountains in the movie, Avatar.  The story is that the director of Avatar saw pillars with ground fog and which came to be the floating mountains.  It appeared that much of the scenery in the movie could have been filmed from this area. 

Hallelujah Mountain

Bottom of the mountain

Top of the mountain

 We had a great walk through the area.  It was a little hazy but not too bad. 

It's a long ways down.

This natural bridge was also in the Avatar movie.  A span of 164 feet (50 meters).

We later took another bus ride to another section of the park, the Tianzi Mountain area, with more gorgeous pillar formations.  The area is known as The Sea of Peaks  and is purported to have over 1000 peaks.  That is believable.  Even with the heavy haze would could see hundreds of peaks.

Imperial Writing Brush Peaks

and a massive McDonald s Restaurant (sigh).

It was a very long day with lots of walking in beautiful scenery.  We ended the day with an hour wait to take the elevator back down to the valley floor.