Taking the Road Less Traveled – Climbing Mountains in Sapa

View from the Summit

My main objective for going to Sapa (aside from seeing the famous rice terraces) was to climb to the summit of Mt Fansipan (3143m). But when I was researching the trek, I learned that the camps are in terrible condition (with rats & cockroaches) & just really poorly maintained. As much as I am happy to go camping in the wild, I couldn’t bring myself to brave those squalid conditions. So my only choice was to try summit in 1 day. It seems that a number of people have done it and it is a 10-12 hour climb at a good pace.

Being on a tight budget, I really wanted to hike up the mountain without a guide. But since we didn’t have extra days to spare, we didn’t want to risk getting lost on the way up. A lot of the guiding companies either didn’t offer a 1-day Mt Fansipan trek or were quite costly (i.e. $150 USD per person). So we found a local guide who was offering the 1-day climb for $90 USD for 2 people. I sent him an email & booked our climb well in advance of our trip. Here is Cuong’s email: nongvancuonglc@yahoo.com & phone #: 0168 7863 711.

Unfortunately, when we arrived, Cuong told us that there had been a fire on the summit of Mt Fansipan and the National Park wasn’t allowing anyone to climb up. The fire was apparently caused by people trying to get honey by burning the bees out of their hives. The National Park officers really didn’t seem to care. They were smoking their pipes and BBQ-ing, rudely ignoring us. We tried to plead with them, letting them know we were here for only 1 day and REALLY wanted to climb, but to no avail. It’s too bad we’ll never know what the true reason was. The jungle is so humid and wet that it’s hard to believe the fire could have spread far (if there ever was one). If anyone knows why, please please send me a note. Or maybe we’ll end up seeing this on Scam City?

As an alternative, Cuong offered to take us to another mountain inside TaPhin village. I had trained super hard before the trip just to be able to make the climb, so I was pretty disappointed 🙁

We made it! – @ the summit with Cuong

He took us on his motorbike very deep into the village and arrived at the foot of what Cuong calls TaPhin Mountain (about 2000m). We began our climb and were basically forging our own path through thick vegetation, and trying to scramble up steep walls of loose soil and slippery rocks by pulling ourselves up with whatever we could grab onto. Very soon, we had cuts and scrapes everywhere. I had burrs embedded into my skin for over a week after the climb (well worth it though!). We really wished we had a GoPro at this point because we couldn’t take any pictures while we were hanging on for dear life.

We stopped for lunch around noon and had a picnic of baguette and tomatoes, cucumbers and cheese. I was eating my pineapple when I found a leech stuck on my arm. I freaked out, flicking at it like a madwoman; & this is how I lost my pineapple 🙁 We moved on and made it to summit maybe 30-45min later. I was pretty scared when I realized we were super high and scaling the side of the mountain with nothing on either side of us. The peaks had steep drops on either side of the ‘path’. We tried to take some photos, but it was very misty.

For our descent, we decided to take a new path down the other side of the mountain. The descent was slow and challenging with some acrobatics involved and just pure perseverance. We finally made it down at around 2pm. We didn’t really time our climb, but it may have been about 4hrs in total. We were pretty dirty by now with all the sweating, landsliding, cuts & leech bites. Kevin’s foot was bitten 3 times and it looks like a vampire attacked it. They somehow managed to get INSIDE our shoes!

We then rode the motorbikes back through the village and the views of the rice terraces are amazing. This village had H’mong and Red Dzao tribes and was much more scenic than Cat Cat Village.

The Road Less Traveled – This is definitely one of my Top 3 experiences in Vietnam. We took the road less traveled and were rewarded with a unique jungle experience & a great appreciation for the untouched areas of Vietnam. Being the only 3 people at the summit was an amazing feeling, and one that I will never forget.