Mount Hua | West Up, North Down! Not Tiring at All! Detailed Guide to Mount Hua Routes

| West Up, North Down! Not Tiring at All! Detailed Guide to Mount Hua Routes. Mount Hua has the most spectacular scenery among the Five Great Mountains

Mount Hua is famous for its steepness. Hiking up from Yuquan Temple is quite challenging, so most tourists choose to take the cable car up to either the North or West Peak, then hike around all five peaks of Mount Hua before taking another cable car down.

⚠️If you want to climb all five peaks of Mount Hua with ease, I strongly recommend⚠️ going up from the West and down from the North. The West up, North down route is mostly downhill, making it feel much easier. The downside is that you won't be able to climb Canglong Ridge since it's one-way up only.

My special itinerary: Stayed in Huayin the night before, went up Mount Hua early the next day, Mount Hua (West up, North down) → Yuquan Temple → West Mountain Temple → Guandi Temple → stayed in Huayin again that night.
The fact that I still had energy to visit Yuquan Temple and other attractions in Huayin after coming down from Mount Hua proves that the West up, North down route isn't tiring! This post only covers Mount Hua; I'll update about other attractions in a future Weinan travel guide. See images 2-7 for the specific route.

Here's my actual itinerary timeline:
[0756] Arrived at Mount Hua East Gate
[0810] Boarded the West Peak cable car shuttle bus (regardless of which cable car you take, you need to take a shuttle bus; West Peak and North Peak cable cars have different queues, so be careful not to line up in the wrong one)
[0856] Arrived at the cable car lower station (yes, the West Peak shuttle bus takes over 40 minutes)
[0909] Boarded the cable car [0923] Arrived at the West Peak cable car upper station
[0929] Fork in the path (Image 8 shows a distant view, with the fork in the middle). To the right is West Peak (the highest point in Image 9). Since it was visible and crowded, and not the highest peak of Mount Hua, I skipped it. Going there and back would take about 20 minutes.
[0955] South Peak [1018] Finished taking photos and left (South Peak was chaotic with photographers, unlike North Mountain which has railings for people to line up. You need to wait for the right moment to get a decent photo)
[1030] Jintiangong [1038] South Heaven Gate
[1040] Plank Walk queue (sign showed 3-4 hour wait time. Note: if you don't want to do the Plank Walk, you can still go see it by walking straight up, no queuing needed. Those famous dangerous Mount Hua photos you see online are taken here. If you want to try it, best to start early)
[1105] Left the Plank Walk area (spent some time buying milk tea)
[1119] Sparrowhawk's Somersault (queue was relatively short, about 1 hour; fog was starting to roll in)
[1134] East Peak [1148] Eagle's Beak Rock and East Peak Yanggong Pagoda
[1157] Celestial Ladder [1205] Yinfeng Pavilion
[1212] Central Peak [1226] Golden Lock Pass
[1245] Five Clouds Peak Service Station (bought a boxed meal here; as shown in Image 5, meals cost 35 yuan, which is reasonable, so you don't need to bring your own food)
[1331] Canglong Ridge
[1404] North Peak Archway (by this time, North Peak was mostly covered in fog, so I headed straight to the cable car without climbing North Peak)
[1412] Mount Hua North Peak cable car upper station [1423] Cable car lower station
[1429] Boarded the return shuttle bus [1455] Returned to the East Gate and headed to Yuquan Temple

The entire West up, North down journey, including shuttle buses and cable cars, took about 7 hours and wasn't tiring. I hope this helps as a reference.
If you want to do the Plank Walk and Sparrowhawk's Somersault, add another 1-4 hours.