Visiting Mount Wudang - Hubei, China

Research

While researching Mount Wudang, I found an informative post by Fiona Mai, check it out here. Originally I thought of staying up at Mount Wudang. It's not impossible since there are quite a few hotels there, some bigger than others. I suggest use Trip.com if you want to explore that option.

Don't book a hotel up the mountain yet until you read this,

Once I read that post by Fiona Mai I came to understand how the transport system works up at Mount Wudang. Mount Wudang is not open to public per se. One can't just take a taxi or Didi to a hotel up at the mountain. If you do book a hotel room at Mount Wudang, you have to go to Visitor Center at the bottom of the mountain and take a bus there which will take you to some spots up the mountain. 

The buses that run as transport system don't run very late. As far as I know, the buses start around 7:30 until 18:00. I could be wrong, please do check with the help desk at the Visitor Center. They were friendly and answer all of our questions. I also remember watching a YouTube video where the poster was stuck up the mountain with no way of getting down after the buses stop operating.

We ended up getting a hotel about 10 minutes walk away from the Visitor Center. It's cheaper and better condition than hotels up the Mount Wudang. And we didn't have to rush getting to my hotel since we arrived mid day. The name of the hotel was Puman Mountain Residence Courtyard 璞曼山居院子(武当山入口店). You can see the pictures of the room here.

One day is not enough.

We heard from our taxi driver that Wudang Mountain is famous for people to go pray to have their wishes fulfilled. For that reason I see why The Golden Summit  金顶 was flocked with locals while we were there. So unless you are there just to pray at The Golden Summit then you would need more than one day to explore the whole mountain.

We spent two days there and we hardly had enough time to explore every spots in the mountain.  On our first full day we started at around 8 am at Visitor Center. We took a bus to Qiongtai 琼台 which is where the ropeway station is located. From there we took the ropeway up to Golden Summit. 

By around 12 we started making our way down. We planned to hike down instead of taking the cable car. We finally made it to Visitor Center around 4 pm. I think the hike down took about more than 2 hours. I would not suggest that. I think it's best to take the cable car down and save your energy for second day. You still need your legs for second day up the mountain. 😅

Tickets

The tickets for adults at the time of our visit was RMB 263 (USD 37). That consisted of RMB 164 for admission ; RMB 90 for transport ; RMB 9 for insurance. Additional RMB 150 (USD 21.10) is needed for cablecar roundtrip to Golden Summit or RMB 80 (USD 11.25) for cable car one way if you decide to walk down. There's also senior tickets pricing.

The tickets we bought were good for more than one day. The following day we only paid RMB 50 (USD 7.03) for transportation.