Sichuan · Three Peaks, and the Walk Up to Them
Yading Nature Reserve (稻城亚丁)
A high reserve in the far southwest of Sichuan built around three snow peaks that carry the names of three bodhisattvas. It is walked rather than looked at, the altitude is the difficulty, and the country on the way in is as good as the reserve itself.
Quick Facts
The Short Version
| What it is | A reserve of glacial valleys, alpine tarns and three snow peaks, entered on foot from a shuttle road |
|---|---|
| Where | Daocheng county, Garze prefecture, the far southwest corner of Sichuan |
| The three peaks | Each is named for a bodhisattva, and the arrangement is read as a mandala rather than as a range |
| What people do | Walk. A valley circuit at moderate height, and a harder climb to the tarns at the top |
| The difficulty | Altitude. The gate is high and the top of the walk is very much higher, and the last section is the one that defeats people |
| Getting there | An airport at very high altitude, or a long drive from Chengdu. Both have consequences for how you feel on day one |
| Also worth the time | The plateau on the approach: poplar shelterbelts, braided rivers, grazing land and enormous sky |
| Time needed | Three days minimum, including one for acclimatisation |
Why Go
A Mandala You Have to Climb
1. The mountains are an arrangement, not a range
Three snow peaks stand around a centre here, and each carries the name of a bodhisattva. That is not a poetic gloss applied afterwards; it is how the place is organised and how people move through it. Walking between them is a circuit with religious meaning, prayer flags are strung at the lakes, and small stone cairns stand in the shallows of the water. One of the pictures below shows both.
Reading the site that way changes what the walk is. A Western hiker arrives with a summit-and-viewpoint model: get high, look out, come down. What is happening around you here is closer to a procession, and the peaks are not there to be climbed. This page does not say which peak carries which name, because that cannot be established from the photographs and the sources disagree in ways that matter to the people who come here to walk it.
The mountains reached Western attention in the late 1920s, when a foreign botanist working in southwest China published photographs and an account of them. The reserve now markets itself as the original of a famous fictional valley from a novel of the following decade, which is a claim made locally and by several other places in the region as well.
2. The altitude is the visit
The gate is already high and the upper tarns are far higher, and almost everything that goes wrong here goes wrong because of that gap. A visitor who flies in lands at an airport high enough to cause problems on the first afternoon, walks the next morning, and finds that a path that would be an easy hour at home takes three and hurts. Horses can be hired for part of it, oxygen is sold at the trailhead, and both are doing real business.
What the effort buys is specific and worth knowing in advance. The upper basins hold small lakes of two quite different kinds, and two of the pictures below show the pair. One is a flat milky turquoise, opaque, ringed with a pale shelf of fine sediment: that colour is rock ground to flour by ice and held in suspension. The other is clear enough that the mottled pattern of the stones on the bottom shows through the blue. Same mountain, same week, different water.
The approach is the other half of the trip and most itineraries waste it. The plateau on the way in is open grazing country with braided rivers over pale gravel, planted rows of poplars turning gold in October, grass hills and a sky that is the reason people describe this part of Sichuan the way they do. One of the pictures below is that country rather than the reserve, and it is there on purpose.
The catch. Altitude is the real constraint and it is not a formality: people are taken off the upper trail every day in season. The site is far from everything, the airport is expensive and weather-dependent, and the drive from Chengdu is two long days. Inside the reserve the shuttle and the walking are strictly routed and the upper section becomes a queue in peak weeks. Autumn is when the valleys turn and the peaks are out, and it is also when beds and flights are hardest to get.
Orientation
Town, Gate, Shuttle, Foot
The pattern is fixed. Sleep in the town outside the reserve or in the village inside it, take the shuttle from the gate up to the trailhead, and walk from there. A lower circuit takes in the monastery, the valley floor and the first lake, and is manageable for most people. The upper section climbs to the high tarns and is the part that requires the day to be planned around it.
Horses can be hired for a stretch of the upper route and are worth considering rather than dismissing. The cost of pride here is spending the rest of the trip in a room with a headache.
Practical
Things Worth Knowing
Give the altitude a day before you use it
Arriving and walking high the next morning is how most visits go wrong.
Sleep inside the reserve if you can
It removes the morning commute and puts you under that sky at night.
Book autumn far ahead
October is when the valleys turn and when everything is full.
Take the approach seriously
The plateau on the way in is not dead time between the airport and the gate.
Timing
When to Go
| Season | The case for | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Late September to late October | The valleys turn rust and gold, the air is clear and the peaks are out most days | The busiest and most expensive weeks of the year, and beds sell out months ahead |
| May and June | Green, flowering and far quieter, with snow still heavy on the peaks | Cloud increases through June and the upper walk can be wet |
| July and August | Warm at the valley floor and the whole reserve open | The wet months. Cloud sits on the peaks and the upper paths are muddy |
| November to April | Empty, cold and very clear on the good days | Snow closes sections, the road can be difficult and services run at a minimum |
Context
The Far Corner of Kham
This is the southeastern edge of the Tibetan plateau, in what was historically Kham, and it is Tibetan country in language, religion and building rather than a Sichuan valley that happens to be high. The monasteries, the flags, the stone stacks and the mani walls are not decoration laid over a scenic area; they are what the place was doing before anyone sold a ticket.
It came to Western notice in the late 1920s through a foreign botanist who spent years in the southwest collecting plants and photographing what he saw, and who published on these mountains in a widely read magazine. A novel of the following decade invented a hidden Himalayan valley that has been attached to the region ever since, and several places in Yunnan and Sichuan now claim to be its original. The claim sells tickets and is not verifiable, and the mountains do not need it.
What changed the place recently was access. An airport at very high altitude and improved roads turned a journey that used to take a week from Chengdu into something a Chinese traveller can do over a long weekend, and the visitor numbers followed. The reserve is managed tightly as a result, with a fixed route, a shuttle and a cap in busy periods. That is the reason the paths in these photographs are worn into braids, and it is also the reason the valley floors are still intact.
Nearby
Other Stops on the Same Trip
Spot · about 200 km south
Pudacuo National Park (普达措)
Across the Yunnan border near Shangri-La, and the usual next stop going south.
Spot · about 400 km northeast
Hailuogou Glacier Park (海螺沟)
A glacier that comes down into forest, on the way back toward Chengdu.
Where to Base
Daocheng (稻城)
Daocheng town is the county seat and the practical base, a couple of hours from the reserve gate, with the airport on the plateau above it. There is also accommodation at the village inside the reserve, which is the better choice for anyone doing the upper walk.
Chengdu is the gateway city for the whole region: flights to the plateau airport, or two long days of driving through country that people make the trip for on its own. Flying up and driving out is easier on the body than the reverse.
Experiences
What You Can Actually Do Here
On site · one day
The lower valley
The shuttle, the monastery, the valley floor and the first lake, at a height most people manage on their second day at altitude.
On site · one long day
The high tarns
The upper climb to the two high lakes, with horses for part of it if wanted.
Guided · 8 days
Western Sichuan by road
Chengdu to the plateau and back, with the reserve given three days and the country on the way treated as part of the trip.
Give it three days and spend the first one doing very little. The three peaks are arranged rather than ranged, the walk between them is a circuit with meaning attached, and the two high lakes are worth the climb if the air lets you make it. And do not treat the plateau on the way in as travel time: poplars in rows turning gold beside a braided river under that sky is the other half of what you came for.
Western Sichuan, Paced for the Altitude
The mistake on this trip is almost always the schedule rather than the route. Tell us your dates and our local team will build in the acclimatisation day, get you a bed inside the reserve for the high walk, and arrange horses so that the last climb is a choice rather than a problem.