Jade Dragon Snow Mountain is located at the northwest of Lijiang City, Yunnan Province. The mountain range runs north and south. It is 13 kilometers wide from east to west and 35 kilometers long from north to south. On the tops of very high mountains snow persists throughout the year. It looks like a jade dragon twists on the mountain top and jumps into Jinsha River. It is a holy mountain for Naxi People. The main summit Shanzidou has an altitude of 5596 meters.
Jade Dragon Snow Mountain is 35 kilometers Lijiang. In Lijiang City you can have a magnificent view of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, with the main peak thrust into the clouds, the Old Man Peak standing out on the right and Black Snow Peak on its left. Its peak was climbed for the first time in 1963 by a research team from Beijing.
The 13 peaks of 18,360-foot Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, a treasure of wild plants and rare animals, are like a silver dragon lying in the clouds. Awesome and unconquered, they dominate the Lijiang Plain. Some have described Jade Dragon Snow Mountain as a radiant cornet crowning Lijiang’s head. It is said that the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain arose from an ancient geosyncline 230 million years ago in an age when dinosaurs began to increase and formed its present shape sometime during the last 600,000 years, even as late as 12,000 years ago.
The scenic area of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain consists of several scenic spots
Ganhaizi is a meadow in the east of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. It is 4 kilometers’ long and 1.5 meters’ wide with an altitude of 2900 meters. It is a great place to watch the snow mountain. The scenery is beautiful with many kinds of flowers and plants, cows and sheep.
In the alpine meadows of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain’s lower slopes, lonely herders sing to their goats and set the wild echoes flying with the music of their reed pipes. It is a botanist’s paradise, and a ” kingdom of medicinal materials.” Of the 13,000 kinds of plants in Yunnan, more than half of them can be found on Jade Dragon Snow Mountain as well as 400 types of trees in 20 primeval forest communities. The mountain is decorated with blooming flowers 10 months of the year. It is also home to a rare tea – Wild Snow Tea -which the Naxi insist is good for high blood pressure. The mountain is also considered a sanctuary for animals. It is home to 30 kinds of animals protected by the state, such as the wild ass, the Yunnan snub-nosed monkey, the lesser panda, etc. It even has green glittering snow. You can see it from Yunshanping ( Dragon Spruce Meadow )if you look westward. The only explanation that has emerged is that it may be caused by crystals or algae. And she has a glacier at the lowest altitude in China that is 7.5 miles wide and 21.7 miles long.
A chairlift has been built up the mountain. The first section takes you about halfway up, near Love-Suicide Hill, where you can rent horses to ride to a large meadow. The second chairlift, the highest in Asia, takes you to a stunning 4506m, where walkways lead to awesome glacier views. Watch out for the symptoms of altitude sickness here-Chinese entrepreneurs sell bags of oxygen to chain-smoking Chinese tourists for around 30 RMB.
Several other scenic sreas have recently opened up. A ski lift has been built at Yunshanping, 36km from Lijiang. The lift takes you up to a plateau at 3300m, from where there are walking trails.
The scenic area of Yak Meadow(Maoniuping) is around 60 km from Lijiang, where yet another cable car takes tourists up to the meadows at 3500m. Snowflake Lake(Xuehua Hai) is nearby and there are plenty of hiking opportunities all around.
Ticket fare: entrance ticket CNY105, CNY80 for Lijiang Old Town, tourist bus CNY20;
Cable Car: Glacier Park CNY150, Yunpingshan Cable Car CNY77, Maoniuping CNY85.
How to get there
There are buses available from Lijiang Old Town to Jade Dragon Snow Mountain.