Straddling the Divide: the Yangtze and the Mekong
Trip Start
Mar 21, 2005
1
48
354
Trip End
Ongoing
Yongdui,
China
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
This was the location for our next film shooting.
Gomba and I were accompanied by one of the staff from the Nature Reserve on this trek. Unfortunately Jonathan had succumbed to the altitude so was unable to join us: "it can happen to the best of us."
To reach the pass, we headed to the northernmost valley of the central stream flowing through the heart of Baimaxueshan Nature Reserve. Like the Yongdui valley, the nomads in this valley had also left; abandoned huts scattered throughout the valley, a mix of forests, bogs, shrublands, and pastures. Along the way, the trail came and went, crossing streams on precarious logs, dissipating within bogs, and clarifying near nomadic huts. In one bog, I sank to my knees in cold mud. Luckily I didn't fall off the log crossing the raging stream. "SURVIVOR" would do well here; or, then again, maybe not as tropical areas seem more suited to their tastes.
At the end of the valley, we reached a terminal moraine, sparsely vegetated with alpine plants tucked into the nooks and crannies of boulders and rocks. The lateral moraines were sparsely covered with Rhododendrons and other high altitude plants.
Soon, however, the vegetation ended--we were in the land of rock, snow, and ice. The trail steepened with the Mordor Mountains overhead. The pass was ahead, a small dip between the mountains. A switchback trail led up the rock to this dip.
We finally reached the pass at 15,800 feet, 7.5 miles later. Here we began our filming as the wind whipped scattered flurries onto our faces. To our left, the jagged and foreboding peaks of Baimaxueshan loomed above us. Straight ahead lay the valley of the Mekong with its immense peaks rising to the northwest. To the left, the Mordor Mountains appeared like teeth of a monster. Behind us was the valley from which we came, thousands of feet below.
On the way back, we filmed the mountain scenes, the peaks, the snow, the rapidly-moving clouds, the alpine lakes, the cairns, the flowers, and the meandering stream through the glacial valley. We finished our hike, 15 miles in all, under the dim light of the waxing crescent moon.
