Exploring Zhangjiajie National Forest Park was an item on my bucket list ever since I learned that these beautiful mountains existed! In Zhangjiajie, there are two main areas that you will want to explore – Zhangjiajie National Forest Park and Tianmen Mountain. While you could easily spend about a week to truly take it all in, we saw the highlights over a weekend in December 2019, making this one of our favourite weekend getaways yet!
Our Itinerary
We only had a Friday – Sunday schedule to work with, but luckily, flights out of Shanghai PVG airport worked well! We chose to fly with Shanghai Airlines, leaving at 20:05 on a Friday night and leaving Zhangjiajie on a Sunday at 22:45. Yes, it was a late night on Sunday, but totally worth the extra time exploring the mountains!
Friday
We landed in Zhangjiajie city around 23:00 and straight away booked a Didi taxi to our hostel north of the city, close to Zhangjiajie National Forest Park. The Didi was about 100RMB and took approximately 1 hour to arrive at our hostel. We chose to stay at Guihua Road 106th Hostel and absolutely loved our stay. The rooms were neat and clean, and the hospitality was exceptional. We spent some time on Friday evening with the lady working there, and she gave us a map and detailed information on the highlights and how best to explore in just one day. This was a great help and really made our day exploring truly efficient and smooth travelling.
Guihua Road 106th Hostel is located in the town of Wulingyuan. We chose to stay here due to the easy morning access to the cable car. The park entrance is about a 10-minute walk from the hostel, and it was a great location to stay.
Saturday
With just one day to explore the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, our suggested highlights were as follows: Tianzi Mountain, Yangjiajie, Yuanjiajie (Hallelujah Mountains/Avatar Mountains), and ending at the Bailong Elevator. Since we went in the “low season,” our park entrance fee was a bit lower, costing us 115RMB per person. The cost includes internal transit by cable car and by bus. The Bailong Elevator ticket is not included in this fee. The park ticket is actually valid to use within 4 days and is also connected to your fingerprint, so you are unable to transfer your ticket to others. There is also luggage storage near the park entrance; however, we kept our luggage stored at our hostel for the day for free :).
Tianzi Mountain
We took the cable car from the Wulingyuan entrance. It was a quick ride up the mountain, less than 10 minutes. There are also a few restaurants at the top (including a McDonald’s at this location), so bringing snacks is not essential, as you can grab plenty of snack options in the park. There are a few view spots at Tianzi Mountain, which are quite neat and give you your first glimpse of the beauty that Zhangjiajie has to offer!
Yanjiajie
Getting to Yanjiajie was quite simple by bus. You will see many bus parking signs, and the buses run very efficiently. We rarely waited long to get to our next stop. Here, there are many more trails to go explore, and one recommendation was to see the “One Step To The Heaven” viewpoint. If you’re on a time crunch like we were, we saw “The Great Wall of Natural” before making our way to our next stop.
Yuanjiajie
At Yuanjiajie, you will find the Heaven Pillar, also known as the Hallelujah Mountains and commonly nicknamed the “Avatar Mountains”. There are many viewpoints to witness the beauty of these mountains, and they certainly did not disappoint. This was my FAVOURITE PART of the weekend, and we absolutely loved the view. In this area, you will also see (and walk on) “The Greatest Natural Bridge” and the“Enchanting” area of the park. After spending quite some time exploring, we headed to the bus to make our way to the Bailong Elevator.
Bailong Elevator
The fee to use the elevator was 65RMB per person. The elevator does have a bit of a line; however, we did not end up waiting that long. To be honest, the view is neat, but the elevator was packed. They fit in as many people as they could, making it not so comfortable to take in the view. The elevator ride time is about a minute and a half. Alternatively, you could hike down, which would take a couple of hours before reaching the bus stop at the base of the mountain. After getting to the bottom of the elevator, we took a bus (with a couple of pit stops) back to the Wulingyuan entrance.
Transiting from Wulingyuan to Zhangjiajie City
After our awesome day exploring, we wanted to head south to Zhangjiajie City to be close to Tianmen Mountain for our day out on Sunday. This was super easy and very inexpensive. We took the city bus, which was less than a 5-minute walk from our hostel. It cost us 13RMB per person, and the ride took about an hour. This was way cheaper than taking a taxi and I highly recommend this method of transit.
Sunday
Tianmen Mountain
Tianmen Mountain is also home to the famous Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon Glass Bridge…which we did not go to. It certainly looks really cool, and I’ve heard great recommendations to go see it; however, we spent more time on the mountain, and there are little mini glass bridge areas, so we did that instead. If you want to see the Glass Canyon Bridge, it is a separate cost from the mountain. We heard it is worth the cost, so check it out and tell me what we missed!!!
Choosing A, B, or C???
When deciding how to plan your day on Tianmen Mountain, we learned there are three options:
a) Cable car up, bus down
b) Bus up, cable car down
c) Bus up, bus down
We went with Plan A, which, in the end, we were very happy that we did. The cable car actually begins in Zhangjiajie City and takes about 30 minutes to get to the mountain. We booked our tickets online ahead of time; however, the window we were meant to pick up our booked tickets wasn’t open, so we ended up in the regular line anyway. Regardless, the tickets are booked for a 1-hour window, so by booking online we had the first slot to go on the cable car.
Exploring Tianmen Mountain
To explore the whole mountain, it really only takes about 6 hours, depending on your pace. We covered most of the trails, finding it easy to navigate and a fun mountain to explore. The park entrance ticket was 235RMB per person, and it is valid for one day only.
After taking the cable car up, we arrived at the Upper Station of Cable Way. This is one of the main areas of the mountain, and many trails begin from here. We could have preplanned our route better, but ultimately we enjoyed taking the little cable car (resembling a ski lift) from the “Yumeng Fairy Peak” to the Cherry Bay restaurant. From there, we went East to walk along the suspension bridge and paths along the side of the mountain.
The views are pretty neat, but not quite the same as those at the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park. I did however, like the walk along the mountain, and there are three points where you can pay a small fee to walk on a glass-bottom (Approximately 5RMB per person). We did our walk at the “Coiling Dragon Cliff Glass Bottom Cliffside Path,” and it was really neat. Luckily, it wasn’t very busy as we went in the low season, so although the glass bridge path is small, it was really neat to walk on and take in the views.
Plan A: Getting Down the Mountain
With the Plan A transit from the mountain, we took the Transmountain Escalator down. The escalator is a single lane only, and you take many continuous escalators down until you reach the Opening of the Tianmen Cave. It seems that there is another escalator to get to the bus area, however, we walked down the 999 steps of the “Stairway to Heaven”. You take the bus from there, winding quickly (wear your seat belt…seriously!!) down the rest of the mountain until you reach your starting point at the Down Station of Cable Way.
Our Stay in Zhangjiajie City
We chose to stay at Zhangjiajie Yuansu Inn for our one-night stay on Saturday evening. Although this place was a little difficult to find, we had a great experience. For a small extra cost, we kept the room for the entire Sunday until our flight, which was great to freshen up and have some rest after a day exploring the mountain!
Post Mountain Craft Beer Anyone??
Before our flight, we found this place called Craft Beer in Mai Ya Xiang House. It has great decor and a really cool vibe. We met the owner earlier in the day when we passed by, and were excited to come back later in the evening when it actually opened. I highly recommend checking this place out for a nice beer and decent craft selection!
We absolutely loved our time exploring Zhangjiajie City, Tianmen Mountain, and Zhangjiajie National Forest Park. Although we could have spent a couple more days visiting, we managed to fit in a lot for our weekend getaway! We highly recommend visiting, even as a weekend destination! We hope our tips are helpful and you enjoy exploring just as much as we did! Happy travelling!
