Conquering Mt. Fansipan

On our trip around Viet­nam last March, a vis­it to the moun­tain town Sapa was oblig­a­tory.

Most vis­i­tors to the town join one of the many local tribe ladies to hike around the mar­vel­lous rice ter­races. Orig­i­nal­ly, this is what we had planned, too. But unlike the Mekong delta, where the rice can be har­vest­ed up to three times a year, the sea­son in Sapa starts with the plant­i­ng in May and ends with the har­vest in Sep­tem­ber. So when we arrived in March, the ter­races were com­plete­ly emp­ty, mud­dy and dull – lucky us…

In ear­ly March the rice ter­races weren’t as mag­nif­i­cent as we had hoped for..

What a dis­ap­point­ment. Nonethe­less, it was quite impres­sive to see the ter­races build into the moun­tains like they belonged there, and I was also very curi­ous about the local tribes liv­ing in the area. So I was still will­ing to do a two-day-trek com­plete with an authen­tic home­s­tay in a small vil­lage.

But Ben had put his mind to anoth­er idea by now.
The sec­ond he real­ized it was pos­si­ble to do a trek up to the peak of Mt. Fanis­pan, the high­est moun­tain of Indochi­na, he was enrap­tured. He has this thing for superla­tives so there was no way of talk­ing him out of this.

Inter­est­ed in doing the hike to Mt. Fan­si­pan your­self? You’ll find some quick facts about it at the end of this post 😉

We spent an entire after­noon search­ing the inter­net and ask­ing around in restau­rants and hotels to find a way to do the trek. While there are a bunch of com­pa­nies offer­ing the reg­u­lar tours, we didn’t find a lot of them who did a Fan­si­pan trek. For­tu­nate­ly, we even­tu­al­ly found a com­pa­ny that was nes­tled into a small street in Sapa. The own­er of Sapa Orig­i­nal Trek, Mr. Thin, wel­comed us and had a long talk with us although his shop was already sup­posed to be closed. He took away the wor­ries we had that are nat­ur­al when you’re fac­ing a spon­ta­neous two day climb to a 3000-meter sum­mit. He even helped us with the equip­ment as we had noth­ing warm enough. He lent us his own jack­ets for the hike and took us to his good friend who owns an out­door shop just around the cor­ner. There we rent­ed hik­ing boots for Ben and bought two heavy duty rain coats.

We splurged on a fan­cy meal that night and stocked up on ener­gy bars know­ing we would need them the next day.

After an unrest­ful night we stood before a big deci­sion. Ben had got­ten sick over night and was feel­ing mis­er­able. I was hav­ing sec­ond thoughts because I had strug­gled with far small­er moun­tains before. But we did pay a large amount of mon­ey and who said trav­el­ing was sup­posed to be fun any­way, right?

So we dressed in our mis­matched gear and hoped for the best.

After a fill­ing break­fast (at least for me, Ben couldn’t even eat a dry piece of bread) we were picked up by Mr. Thin and his com­pan­ion who drove us into town on their motor­bikes. There we met an old­er cou­ple from Hong Kong that would join us on the ride to the start­ing point of the trek. They told us they were doing this hike in prepa­ra­tion of their upcom­ing trek to the top of the Mount Ever­est. Alright, I thought, noth­ing to wor­ry about, you will man­age just fine…

It took us about half an hour to get to the start­ing point of the trek, the car strug­gling up the ascents and around the ser­pen­tines. We final­ly met our guide. He was about half my size (both ver­ti­cal­ly and hor­i­zon­tal­ly), wore rub­ber boots and a bast bas­ket on his back. I sud­den­ly felt bad about my hik­ing boots, high­tech back­pack and rain­proof jack­et…

It was clear that only a tiny frac­tion of the 100€ we had paid per per­son went to the guide. We decid­ed to tip him heav­i­ly if we sur­vived this trip.

By now I was so hyped and drunk on excite­ment that my wor­ries were swept away. We start­ed our trip through some dense jun­gle. Due to the already high alti­tude we were break­ing right through the cloud bar­ri­er and could some­times only see a cou­ple of meters ahead.

Heavy rain­fall in the week before had filled the tiny creeks, which cut our path ever so often, with plen­ty of water. We crossed rivers on fall­en tree trunks, step­ping stones and by hold­ing onto the pro­trud­ing branch­es from the thick­et along the stream.

Our guide didn’t speak much but he point­ed out var­i­ous flo­ra and fau­na along the way. He also col­lect­ed a cou­ple of mush­rooms and herbs which he would use to pre­pare our din­ner that night. Despite walk­ing at a mod­er­ate pace to take in the sounds and smells of our sur­round­ings, we man­aged to cov­er quite a dis­tance in the first cou­ple of hours. That is until we reached the first ascend.

So far the path had been rel­a­tive­ly flat. As soon as we reached the end of the for­est, how­ev­er, we could see the steep climb ahead of us. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it was also at this moment that the excite­ment and adren­a­line wore off so that Ben start­ed to feel sick again. He was a mis­er­able sight to behold. We took a lot of breaks dur­ing the climb so he could sit down and have some water. Our guide was kind and wait­ed patient­ly but we felt bad for him as he was prob­a­bly payed per trip and not for the amount of hours we need­ed.

Tak­ing a short break along the way to replen­ish our ener­gy

It was rough­ly around 1pm when we reached the small open hut at 2200 meters where we would have our lunch break. We met some oth­er hik­ers here that had start­ed this same morn­ing as well; an Aus­tralian cou­ple, a guy from Britain and the cou­ple from Hong Kong. We had a good chat with them while our guide pre­pared our lunch that he had car­ried in his bas­ket all day long. After a while, he gift­ed us with bread, eggs and veg­gies — just what we had need­ed after the exhaust­ing hike. We shared some of our can­dy bars with him in return and ate in silence. Ben hadn’t got­ten any bet­ter. Luck­i­ly, the Aus­tralian girl was quite knowl­edge­able about med­ica­tions and gave him some­thing that she had brought along. That should make it a bit bet­ter, she said. It was obvi­ous that they all doubt­ed he would ever make it to the top. While the oth­er groups all left soon after lunch, we stayed a lit­tle longer so that Ben could rest a bit.

It was not long after we had con­tin­ued our way that the meds kicked in and turned Ben into a charg­ing bull. He streamed right past me, laugh­ing in glee and whilst I told him not to waste his ener­gy, that he was only feel­ing bet­ter, not being bet­ter, he couldn’t resist run­ning up the moun­tain. Lit­er­al­ly. At least he was much bet­ter com­pa­ny now com­pared to the Moan­ing Myr­tle he had been on the way to the hut, and he was able to enjoy the view for the first time on the trip. And he didn’t need to wait long for the views…

We reached the first high­light of the trip about halfway of our hike that day. On a small plateau the trees had drawn back so that we could have an unre­strict­ed view of the land­scape below us. What we saw was breath­tak­ing: high moun­tains around us, deep val­leys over­cast with clouds below us, the steep climb yet ahead of us and the infi­nite stretch of nature as far as the eye could see. It was enchant­i­ng.

I felt so alone and yet not lone­ly at all. It is in such moments that you tru­ly under­stand what a vast and beau­ti­ful plan­et our earth is and how incred­i­bly small and irrel­e­vant we are com­pared to it. And yet I felt deep with­in me how con­nect­ed we all are, that we are all a part of this big liv­ing plan­et, its trees and grass­es, its moun­tains and rivers, its tiny insects and large mam­mals. And among them all I stood so high I could bare­ly see the val­ley below and real­ized that men’s great­est gift is the abil­i­ty to see beau­ty in this world.

It was a long time until we were able to turn away from the sight and slow­ly con­tin­ued our climb. The feel­ing, how­ev­er, stayed with me far beyond this moment.

The track got con­tin­u­ous­ly hard­er now. While it was a pleas­ant walk at the start, it was now a chal­leng­ing, twist­ing path that required your feet, hands and full con­cen­tra­tion to maneu­ver. We kept ask­ing our guide just how much longer it was and it was infu­ri­at­ing that after every hour that passed his answer was still ‘about two hours’.

This is what pure exhaus­tion looks like.

But after what felt like an eter­ni­ty, when I could feel nei­ther my feet nor legs any­more and I only pushed myself for­ward with my entire focused mind whis­per­ing to myself ‘Just one more step. You can do it. Just anoth­er step.’ we final­ly reached a small clear­ing with a cou­ple of huts. We couldn’t help yelp­ing out in glee.

The camp was a very sim­ple set up. It con­sist­ed of a large wood­en hut with about 10 sep­a­rate rooms, each one only con­tain­ing a wood­en plateau to sleep on. There was no elec­tric­i­ty which made it rather hard to vis­it the bath­room in the back of the hut, as the sun set ear­ly and left us feel­ing our way in the sparse light of our phones‘ flash­lights.

The mood, how­ev­er, was frol­ic and we had some great talks with the oth­ers, whom we already knew from our lunch break. All the while our guides pre­pared our din­ner in the small tent a lit­tle fur­ther away. We were absolute­ly starved by now and while all the oth­ers grad­u­al­ly got their food we had to wait rough­ly two hours before our guide brought in a huge plat­ter of steam­ing rice, bowls full of veg­eta­bles and spicy chick­en and beef cur­ries. It was a feast, even though I assume every­thing would have tast­ed great after such an exhaust­ing day.

Our guides prepar­ing spicy chick­en and beef cur­ries for din­ner.

Our guide came back lat­er to ask about our plans for the next day. We had the option to sleep in and climb the rest of the way dur­ing the day or get up a 3am to see the sun rise on the top of the moun­tain. We obvi­ous­ly chose the sec­ond option.

The night at camp was a night­mare. We had hiked in shorts and t-shirts but at night it got so cold that I was frozen stiff despite wear­ing thick clothes and being bur­ritofied into three sleep­ing bags. Sleep was far away, and so I occa­sion­al­ly snug­gled up to Ben, peace­ful­ly snor­ing next to me, to steal some of his heat. I guess there real­ly is an advan­tage to being broad and mus­cu­lar.

Even­tu­al­ly, I fell into a rest­less sleep just short­ly before we were wok­en up by our guide at 3am as promised. Grog­gy and frozen to the bones we hur­ried­ly got dressed and stuffed our back­packs for the day. Our guide had already pre­pared a huge break­fast for us but since we had eat­en so much the evening before and because it was the mid­dle of the night, we bare­ly got any of it down.

When we were ready and stepped out­side the hut with the oth­er hik­ers I was tak­en aback. It was so dark that I couldn’t see my hand in front of my eyes and I won­dered how exact­ly I was sup­posed to climb a moun­tain in those con­di­tions. The guides hand­ed us some head lamps but there weren’t enough for every­one so the rest of us took to their phones to guide the way.

The begin­ning was hard. My legs were stiff, I was dead tired and I kept stum­bling over roots or stones. It was a steep and wind­ing ascent and the wind was blow­ing mer­ci­less­ly from one side. It grad­u­al­ly got bet­ter as the sky above us bright­ened with the ris­ing sun. And that was when it hap­pened.

We turned a cor­ner, now fac­ing the open val­ley beneath us and the moun­tain loom­ing behind us like an ancient, stony drag­on watch­ing over its peo­ple below.

It was the most mag­i­cal moment of my life as I stood at 3000 meters and watched the pink sun rose from the ocean of clouds below us.

There was no noise. The birds went silent and even the wind seemed to hold its breath as the sun rose high­er and high­er and paint­ed the sky around us in impos­si­ble col­ors. We stood in awe and even our guides who had sure­ly seen this spec­ta­cle plen­ty of times couldn’t help but ¬watch in qui­et won­der.

It cost us quite some effort to tear away from the view and con­tin­ue our hike. We all agreed that this must have been the high­light of the whole trek and that now our last goal was to reach the sum­mit of the moun­tain.

I checked my phone con­stant­ly. 2800m, 2900m, 3000m… The clos­er we got, the hard­er it seemed to get. Opposed to the first day, when we had man­aged 1000 meters in alti­tude, these last 300m felt twice as long and a hun­dred times as hard. The soil was mud­dy and slip­pery from the recent rain­falls and Ben was at his absolute low­est now. I would walk a cou­ple hun­dred meters and then wait for him to catch up. Even though the stun­ning view cheered us both up, we were run­ning on our last reserves of ener­gy.

It got fog­gi­er and fog­gi­er the high­er we climbed. After a while, I couldn’t see more than two meters in each direc­tion and my clothes were cling­ing to my skin, all wet from the mist.
I swear I cried out in glee when my foot sud­den­ly hit sol­id rock and I saw the stairs lead­ing upwards into the imper­vi­ous haze. My body sud­den­ly alive with ener­gy almost sprint­ed up those stairs before my brain even real­ized what was going on. That burst of pow­er didn’t last long though as I real­ized just how many stairs there were to the top. My climb turned slug­gish as I dragged one foot before the oth­er. 300, 301, 302…

The final stretch: Stairs lead­ing up to the sum­mit of Mt. Fan­si­pan

The whole area was still eeri­ly emp­ty as the cable cars hadn’t start­ed mov­ing yet. We met the oth­er hik­ers on our way up who were tak­en aback to see that we had actu­al­ly man­aged the rest of the way. One look at Ben told me the sur­prised reac­tion was more than jus­ti­fied.

When we final­ly reached the high­est plateau, Ben and I fell into each other’s arms. We laughed and cried from exhaus­tion and pride and hap­pi­ness. We had done it. After one and a half days of fatigue, sore feet and stiff legs we had reached the sum­mit of Mount Fan­si­pan. Tow­er­ing at 3143 meters we real­ly felt like stand­ing on the top of the world – or at least, as they say, the Roof of Indochi­na.

Final­ly stand­ing at the sum­mit of the high­est moun­tain of Indochi­na was an exhil­a­rat­ing feel­ing.

It didn’t even mat­ter that the weath­er was dread­ful and freez­ing and that we couldn’t see a thing of the amaz­ing view we were hop­ing for. We quick­ly took a few pho­tos and then hur­ried back down the stairs. Whilst our minds were still fuzzy with joy, our bod­ies sur­ren­dered, now that they had reached the goal. It was very quick­ly agreed that there was no way we would hike back down again.

Luck­i­ly for us, the cable car had start­ed mov­ing now and the sum­mit slow­ly filled with tourists in flip flops and with self­ie sticks dan­gling from their wrists. While we had cursed the cable car at the begin­ning of our trip for ruin­ing the stun­ning land­scape and spoil­ing the authen­tic atmos­phere with main­stream tourism, we were glad for it now.

Slow­ly heat­ing up in the cable car ter­mi­nal we bought two one-way tick­ets for 33 US$ (27€ / 23£). This was quite out of bud­get as we had already paid so much for the hike itself, but we real­ly didn’t care much at that moment. We were just immense­ly hap­py to have the worst behind us.

We did it!

It was time to say good­bye to our guide as he was head­ing back down the moun­tain on foot. We offered to pay the cable car for him but he declined and so we tipped him heav­i­ly instead and thanked him for every­thing.

As it was still real­ly ear­ly and the tourists were just arriv­ing instead of leav­ing, we quick­ly man­aged to grab an emp­ty car. We rode in silence as we snatched a last glimpse of the sum­mit before it dis­ap­peared into the thick clouds.
The descend only took about twen­ty min­utes in which we had a great view of the rice ter­races below us, fal­low and brown as they were, and the town in the dis­tance.

When we reached the ground sta­tion we were sur­prised by the huge crowd of tourists wait­ing to take the cable car to the sum­mit. It was quite hilar­i­ous to see them stare at our appear­ance: dirty trousers and mud-caked hik­ing boots, big win­ter jack­ets and the exhaus­tions clear­ly vis­i­ble on our faces. I’m sure some of them got a lit­tle wor­ried see­ing us as to what would await them up there.

Just then we saw Mr. Thin wav­ing to us from the entrance. We had called him ear­li­er to tell him that we would take the cable car and he had said he would pick us up from the sta­tion.

The ride back to Sapa was short and Mr. Thin thank­ful­ly even brought us straight to our hotel instead of his office. We returned our shoes and jack­ets to him and thanked him again for the great expe­ri­ence he had made pos­si­ble for us.

It was still ear­ly morn­ing and our stom­achs slow­ly made them­selves heard so we stuffed our­selves at the break­fast buf­fet before we dragged our­selves up the stairs to our room. The rest of the day was a blur as we dropped dead onto our beds and slept till the sun had set.

Con­clu­sion

The hike to the sum­mit of Mt. Fan­si­pan is an amaz­ing two-day trip for every­one look­ing for some­thing a lit­tle more excit­ing. It offers stun­ning views and will sure­ly leave you entranced by the beau­ty of North­ern Viet­nam. How­ev­er, it is an exhaust­ing hike and should only be under­tak­en with prop­er fit­ness.

Quick Facts

Starting/ End Point: Ranger’s sta­tion at Tram Ton Pass

Kilo­me­ters: 14km one way / 28km round trip

Dura­tion: doable as a one-day hike (at least 10 hours for peo­ple with aver­age fit­ness) but I would rec­om­mend two days

Alti­tude: 3143 meters

Dif­fi­cul­ty Lev­el: 6/10

Tour Oper­a­tor: Sapa Orig­i­nal Trek

Price: start­ing at 80 USD for a group tour. We paid 105 USD per per­son for a pri­vate 2-per­son tour (includ­ing guide, four meals, water, trans­port from Sapa, entrance fee to the park, night at the hut, sleep­ing bag)

Have you con­quered Mt. Fan­si­pan? I’d love to hear about your expe­ri­ence and whether you thought it was worth it in the com­ments below.