Tianmen Mountain - Zhangjiajie, China

Tianmen Mountain and Avatar Mountain Are Not at The Same Location

When I first heard of Tianmen Mountain and Avatar Mountain being in Zhangjiajie, I thought it would be at the same area. Then I watched a YouTube video mentioned that they stayed in the national park to make it easier to get to Avatar Mountain, I thought it would not be necessary. Later on I found out that Tianmen Mountain is accessed from Zhangjiajie City. While Avatar Mountain entrance is closer to Wulingyuan, a town about 45 minutes from Zhangjiajie City.

Cablecar Options

As of early November 2025, there are three different ways to access Tianmen Mountain. Line A, I believe is the oldest ropeway thus the ropeway station is in city center. Because of that the queue for Line A is usually very long. For that reason, I chose Line B. We bought our tickets one day before our visit.  The price was USD 80.82 and there were cheaper price tickets for seniors between 60-64 as well.

Other than Line A being busier and longer queue, Line A will bring you to the top of the cave. Line B on the other hand will bring you to the bottom of the cave and you have an option to climb up.

What I didn't know was line B station is a bit out of city center. We walked to cable car station just behind our hotel. The sign for line B was actually to get onto a mini bus which then brought us to a cable car station. This station is big and adjacent to a performance center for Tianmen Fox Fairy show.

Fog and Fog !

The cable car that took us up the mountain was big enough for a group of ten. But that day it was quiet so it's just the three of us. It looked a big foggy on the way up. By the time we reached the top of mountain the fog got thicker. 

It looked mysterious as we walked from the cable car station to the plaza. But by the time we got there we could not see anything passed 10 m ! No cave to see let alone climbing up.

We walked around a bit waited to see if the fog could lift. After about half an hour we decided to take refuge in a tea shop there. We ordered teas and cakes. We sat around catching up with social media and made plans on what to do in the evening. After more than an hour, the fog still didn't lift ! Sad and defeated we decided to leave.

Ah, but before we left, we stopped by a photo stall there to see whether we could take a photo. One of the plans we talked about while sitting at the tea shop was to pay for a photoshopped photo of Tianmen Mountain cave. At the shop, I approached a couple that just received their photo and inquired about the process.

For the photo service, each session everyone gets eight chances to pose. Every pose that gets printed will be RMB 25 (USD 3.53). We decided to give it a try. The line to the photo session was not very long. We did our session under guidance from the photographer 😎. Once we were done, we went to the counter to pick the poses we wanted to keep and printed. Beware, once we said pass on a certain pose, you could not go back as that photo get deleted immediately. We agreed on too fast and ended up with four printed photos and a link to download the digital version. It's not exactly what we wanted from our trip to Tianmen Mountain since we didn't get a chance to see it ourselves. But for consolation, we still got our photos. 😉