Discover Dali
Cangshan Mountain and its Cableways
苍山（感通索道、洗马潭大索道）
The 19-peak range walling off Dali's western side, rising to 4,122 m with snow on top into early summer. Cableways lift you to cloud-level trails — the Jade Belt Path contours for 18 km along the mountainside with the whole lake laid out below.
The story
What makes this place special
Cangshan, also Diancang Shan, is the range immediately west of Erhai, about 50km long and 20km wide, part of the Yunling system. It has nineteen main peaks, most above 3,500m, with Malong Peak the highest at 4,122m, and a stream between each pair of peaks giving the eighteen streams of the local phrase. Nanzhao designated it one of Yunnan's central peaks. It became a national geopark in 2005 and a UNESCO Global Geopark in 2014, and the Cangshan-Erhai landscape is on China's World Heritage tentative list.
What you’ll discover
Three cableways climb the eastern face from different points, and they go to genuinely different places. The Ximatan line, the long one, rises to around 3,900m near Ximatan, a small alpine tarn below the ridge, with a boardwalk through fir and rhododendron at the top. The Gantong line, from near the Three Pagodas, lands lower at Qingbi Stream level and connects to the Yudai Cloud Path. The Zhonghe line, the oldest and smallest, lands at Zhonghe Temple. The Yudai Cloud Path, Jade Belt Road, is the horizontal trail running roughly 18km along the mountain at about 2,600m, nearly level, with the whole of Erhai below you the entire way.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- The Yudai Cloud Path is the thing experienced visitors come for and the thing day-trippers miss. It is almost flat, well surfaced, and you walk with the lake 700m below you for as long as you like. Ride a cableway up, walk a section, ride down from another station.
- Pick the cableway by what you want. Ximatan for high alpine and a chance of snow; Gantong or Zhonghe for the Jade Belt walk and temples. Do not buy the top cableway if the mountain is in cloud, which it often is by midday.
- The ridge makes its own weather. It can be sunny in Dali and sleeting at 3,900m in the same hour, and the summit cableways close for wind without notice. Carry a windproof and warm layer whatever the forecast in town says.
- Ximatan tops out near 3,900m, which is high enough that visitors who arrived in Dali yesterday will feel it on the boardwalk steps. Go up slowly and do not plan a hike on the same day you arrive from sea level.
- Zhonghe Temple can be reached on foot from the old town in about two hours of steady climbing if you would rather walk than ride; there is also a short, steep trail down from it into the town.
- There is no food worth eating at the top stations. Buy something in the old town first.
When to come
Clear mornings, October to April, before cloud builds on the ridge. Rhododendron on the upper slopes flowers in late spring; the June to September rains bring cloud and close the high cableways often.
Getting around
Better than it sounds, if you choose carefully. The cable cabins board on the level and the Yudai Cloud Path is a graded, largely level surfaced trail, so a wheelchair can use stretches of it and a bad knee can walk it comfortably, which is unusual for a mountain this size. The Ximatan top boardwalk has steps and the tarn loop is rough. Zhonghe Temple is entered up steps.
Worth knowing before you go
Chinese reports indicate the upper section of the Ximatan cableway has been out of service, so confirm it is running before you pay the higher fare. Cangshan weather closes in fast — carry a windproof layer even on a hot morning in town.
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