Overpopulation problems have come for the world’s mountains. Mount Everest is already notorious for its overcrowding problems, but it is not alone. Climbers on Eastern China’s Yandang Mountain got stuck part-way up a cliff and wound up hanging on for dear life from the fixed-route climbing ropes earlier this week. They had to stay there for over an hour while climbers ahead of them got on their way and made room to progress.
Yandang Mountain stands about 255 miles to the south of the Zhejang province city of Shanghai, and its summit reaches a height of 3,773 feet. China celebrates labor day during the first week of May in China, and the holiday drew an influx of tourists to the wilderness area.
Images of the traffic jam of alpinists made a viral splash on Chinese social media. The images showed all climbers wearing helmets, harnesses and safety gear did little to allay the anxieties of commenters online, who expressed incredulity that anyone would volunteer for such a precarious activity.
The climbers were stranded along the “via ferrata,” or “iron road,” a trail of anchor bolts that mark a pre-established route across a rock face. In this case, the via ferrata also featured a safety cable, which ensured the safety of the stranded climbers. The via ferrata is managed by Wenzhou Dingcheng Sports Development, which stated that it underestimated the interest in the mountain. This led to a series of misjudgments that led to the traffic jam. The company issued a statement saying that its lack of a ticket reservation system and the misjudgments of its management team on site led to its customers getting trapped on the route. Had it anticipated such popularity, it would have structured its operation to handle the traffic.
The company is temporarily halting sales of tickets to the climbing route while it restructures its operations, which will include designing and deploying a traffic-control system for future visitors.
