Day 19: Zhangjiajie, Thursday 9th October 2025
Tianmen Mountain National Park
35°, cloudy /misty then fine
NZ$1 = Y4
Y1=NZ$0.25
Another busy day, after a late arrival this morning. Liz was feeling a bit sick today…
Up at 8am, and out for breakfast to McDonalds which is just across the main road near our hotel.
Our hotel is in a collection of alleyways off one of the main roads through Zhangjiajie. The alleyways also contain other hotels, lots of restaurants, shops, etc and were reasonably quiet traffic wise.
We went back to the hotel to check in properly ( Future Home · Aesthetic Homestay, 5 nights NZD$240 with no breakfast ). We had booked in 2 separate bookings ( we did a 3 night booking while in NZ, but decided to stay longer once we got to China, and because couldn’t extend the booking for some reason we made a second booking. So we had to explain that to the hotel as so that didn’t have to change rooms during the stay. All sorted with no problems, and we met the hotel dog and hotel kitten as well.
We had prebooked tickets for Tianmen Mountain today ( another reason why we needed to get to Zhangjiajie yesterday ). There were 3 options for the packages to get to Tianmen Mountain and get into the Tianmen Mountain National Park. The option we had booked ( Line A ) involved a cablecar ride up to the top of the mountain, and a different cable car down, with a bus to connect back to the original cable car’s starting point. One of the reasons we had booked this hotel is that it was a few hundred metres from the 1st cable car station.
Tianmen Mountain ( literally “Heaven’s Gate Mountain” ) is a flat top mountain ( about 1500m ) which is visible from Zhangjiajie, and it has a large hole in it which runs right through the mounatain ( the Heavens Gate ).
We walked across the road to the cable car station, arrived at 9:15am ), and joined the queue to get in to the building, through security the joined the queue inside the building. We had heard that this queue could be very long ( up to 2 hours in busy times ) so we had got here early. The queue wasn’t too bad and we got onto the cable car at 9:40am, for the 25min ride up Tianmen Mountain.
This cable car ( with 6 person cabins ) is supposed to be the longest in the world, travelling nearly 8 kms from downtown Zhangjiajie to the mountain, with most of the route being horizontal over the city outskirts before heading over a couple of ridges of hills, passing through a future mid way station and then rising up the side of the mountain. As we climbed the side of the mountain we went through the mist / cloud.
Leaving the midway station
In the map below we were on the cable car that comes up from the centre bottom, and left the mountain from the cable car directly below it.
We got off the cable car and decided to start on the West Line walkway. There are 2 main walkways around the top of the mountain; East Line ( in yellow above ) and West Line ( in Red ). The 2 combined form a loop around the mountain, so it really didn't matter which way we went at the start, we would eventually wind up back at the same point. But the West Line looked like it had less people so we went that way.
We walked along the cliff edge ( as we did for most of the loop ) for a bit and then paid for tickets to walk on a glass walkway ( Y5 each ) which was hung off the side of the cliff. It is worth noting that most of the walkway on the West Line was hung off the side of the mountain, so the only difference for this piece was that it was glass and you could see straight down for a few hundred metres!. We donned some fancy red shoe covers and walked onto the glass walkway which ran for a few hundred metres. It was a little crowded, with some people stopping for photos, and others stopping because that felt the need to hang onto the mountain for support!
The view down and sideways
Off the glass walkway, through a short forest section called Forest of Wishes ( where people write wishes on a ribbon and tie it to a tree ), and then carried on the normal concrete walkway, wound around the cliff then to a suspension bridge in the south west corner of the mountain, then carried on around the south side to the Tianmen Temple / Cherry Bay Restaurant area. As the name suggests there is a large temple complex in this part of the mountain ( which we chose not to go into ) and a selections of restaurants / food outlets with seating etc. This is also the point where the West line becomes the East Line, heading back around to the north side of the mountain. We stopped for some food and drink at 11:15am, then had a look at the entrance to the temple.
We went back through the food area and started on the East Line. By this point the mist and haze had cleared and it was starting to heart up. We walked through a mix of rocky outcrops and forest areas then back to the cliff edge, but now with view of the ‘back’ of the mountain ( the side away from the city ). This are looks quite rugged with not a lot of development. There was another glass section here but we chose not go on it, and eventually found ourselves above the Heavens Gate opening in the mountain, but on the back side. We then walked back towards the cablecar where we came up ( a lot more people in this area; most people don’t want to walk all the way around the mountain top ( about a 6km loop ). We could look down on the Heavens Gate from the front side.
We then went inside the mountain and down a series of 7 escalators ( long ones ) that took us down to the base of the Heavens Gate and out at 12:30pm. There are another series of escalators that go further down the mountain, bypassing the Steps to Heaven, but we wanted to get out and walk down the steps.
Hung around at the base of the Gate for a bit ( quite big!! ) then walked down the 999 Steps to Heaven. These steps are quite steep ( 45° in places ) and it took about 20 minutes to get down them. If we had chosen a different ticket package we would have had to walk up these steps ( which there were a lot of people doing….but it didn’t look like fun in the heat ) but it was hard enough walking down. Once our legs had stopped shaking we decided to get some lunch.
Heavens Gate
Had lunch at a noodle house ( Y38 for spicy beef noodles ) at 1:30pm, then walked across the plaza on the side of the mountain and onto the walkway to other cable car ( the “Cave Express” ) which would take us down the mountain. Stopped to admire the view and the winding road that used to be the main way to get up the mountain then onto the cable car and headed down. This cable car is quite short ( about 6 minutes long ), is a single drop with no pylons, and has 26 person cabins.
We arrived at the bottom station at 2:15pm, walked through a complex of buildings which are used to perform a nightly show ( The Fairy Fox Show ) with the mountain in the background, and down to the carpark for our shuttle bus back to town ( included in the ticket ). Down the winding roads into Zhangjiajie and arrived back at the 1 cable car station again at 2:45pm. It was about 10° hotter in town than it had been up there mountain.
Got some snacks and headed back to the hotel for a rest ( and maybe a snooze ).
I headed out at 5:30pm to get some photos of Tianmen Mountain at sunset . I went to a nearby park ( Zhangjiajie Citizen Square ) which was very peaceful until the local Tai Chi group arrived ( with techno beats ) and then a competing Tai Chi group arrived started blasting their music 50m away from the first lot. I did have a chat with a mother and adult son who were back in China visiting family, but lived in California.
Back to the hotel at 6:45pm, then out for tea. We walked down the road a little way ( there were lots of little restaurants around where we were staying ) and went to a Muslim restaurant ( Y41 for dumplings and Roujiamo ( Chinese Hamburger ) and 2 drinks ( no beer here ). Back to the hotel at 8:30pm.
Zoomable Map ( pin is located on our hotel location )