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Two Mountains

  This is a real story about mountain climbing. I am not a professional mountaineer, but someday I would like to become one. I want to talk about my two climbing experiences I had in China.

  first, let me introduce some background information about these two mountains. Please refer the map below.

  There are two mountains on the map. One is Mount Xiling, which is located in south-west China. The other one is Mount Ling, which is located in north China. Mount Xiling is about 100 kilometers west of Chengdu, a city in China. If you have seen the famous Hollywood's movie, 2012, you may know that the ark was built near to this city before the world was destroyed by the huge flood in the movie. About 1,000 years ago, in ancient China, there was a poet living in Chengdu. His name is Dufu, one of the most famous poets in China. In that time, there was no electronics, no motor vehicles, and no pollution. The sky was very clear. One day, the poet stood in his backyard and looked out west. He spotted a snow peak shining in the sky. So, he wrote down a famous poem which almost every Chinese know. The mountain described by the poet is Mount Xiling. Its summit is at about 5,300 meters above sea level and is covered by thick snow above the snowline at 4500 meters. Even in summer, you can see the snow peak on the foot of the mountain. But, if you lived in downtown Chengdu, you wouldn't see any little snow peak because of the air pollution in the modern city.

  The other mountain is Mount Ling, which is located in west of Beijing. Compared to Mount Xiling, this mountain looks more like a foothill of Mount Xiling because Mount Ling rises to only 2300 meters above sea level.

  In 2007, I worked in Chengdu for several months. Inspired by the famous poem, I started a climbing trip up Mount Xiling with several colleagues. Although we knew that nobody had succeed to get to the top of the mountain, We still wanted to try. But we didn’t want to try to reach the summit of the mountain. We just wanted to get to the middle platform at 3,600 meters because we didn’t want to cross the snowline. We were not professional mountaineers. Because it was November, you could feel a little bit cold outside. So, we put on very professional mountaineering suits. When we stood the foot of the famous mountain, I found I still couldn’t see the snow peak of the mountain. Then we started to climb. We found the trip was much easier than we thought. The slope was not very steep, and we didn’t feel very cold. When we got to a place at 3000 meters, we felt just a little bit difficulty in breathing. When we finally got up to the platform at 3,600 meters and looked around, we saw only the fog. A heavy fog surrounded us. Not only could we see the snow peak and the summit but also the path we were walking along. And there were no sound. It was very quiet. We could just see each other and listening to our breathing. The scene looked like another Hollywood horror film, the Silent Hill. I was even afraid of zombies jumping out at the fog. So, that was my first climbing experience. I saw nothing except the fog. 

  This climbing experience looked like a tour or vacation for us. It gave me a wrong impression of mountaineering. I still thought that the climbing was an easy activity, until I climbed Mount Ling. This climbing completely changed my mind. It was an adventure.

  The next year, after I came back to Beijing from Chengdu, I tried to climb Mount Ling. That day was May 1. Spring had come in northern China. The ground temperature was high and it was very warm. We could see green trees and many flowers everywhere. When my friends invited me to join the climbing activity, I just thought of it as another tour. So, when I got to the appointment place, I found the other guys had brought mountaineering suit. I even laughed at their suits. I was in normal clothes in spring. So, we started up. At first, we drove to a place at 1500 meters. Then we started to climb the mountain. This mountain has two slopes. The southern slopes are for tourists. And the northern slopes are for mountaineers. We chose the northern slopes. As I thought, the first stage was very easy. We were sweating. Very quickly, we reached a ridge. Then we decided to walk along the ridge toward the summit. After a while, we suddenly found that white group clouds was rising in the valley on our right side. It just looked like fog. But it moved very fast. When the cloud moved to the ridge which we were walking along, we finally found out it was not fog. It was a strong wind mixed with small particles of ice. Until this time, I didn't knew the wind could be seen. But the strange thing was that the wind couldn’t climb over the ridge. It just stayed on the other side of the mountain. The mountain kept Beijing warm from the strong wind. Soon we started to feel cold. We finally reached the peak of the mountain. When we got there, we didn’t find any flowers. There was only wilted grass on the peak. And each grass was surrounded by a layer of ice, which appears white color on the foot of the mountain. Moreover, at this height, we faced the strong wind. And I finally understood the famous Chinese proverb, that the cold wind can shoot through your bones. Fortunately, one of my friends brought a raincoat. So I wore it to keep the cold wind out. Finally, we reached the summit. Although that meant we were facing a the stronger wind and felt colder, we had succeeded.

  At last, I want to share an image from Oxford dictionary. The image teaches me some words about mountains.