After visiting Langzhong Ancient City, we return to Chengdu for one night before catching a bus the next morning, heading west towards the mountains.

As the road begins to ascend, we stop at a service station where a worker delivers a ten-minute lecture about altitude sickness. It’s partly a sales pitch for oxygen cans and altitude sickness drugs, but a tourist had collapsed and died a few days earlier, and the risk is real.

We’re heading into Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture (阿坝藏族羌族自治州), a vast highland region that stretches along the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. It was amazing to think I’d been ~2,300 km away at the opposite end of the plateau a week ago.

The prefecture sits where Sichuan meets Tibet and Qinghai, a landscape of high mountains, deep valleys, and towns that feel culturally distinct from the Han Chinese lowlands we’ve left behind.

The region is home to both Tibetan and Qiang communities, though the boundaries between ethnic territories have always been fluid. It’s also politically sensitive. The town of Aba (阿坝镇), the prefecture capital, was one of several flashpoints during the 2008 Tibetan unrest.

Mount Siguniang (四姑娘山), our destination, sits in the southern reaches of Ngawa. At over 6,000 metres, it’s one of the highest peaks in the Qionglai Mountains (邛崃山), and the gateway to what locals call the Alps of China.

Shuangqiao Valley

By mid-afternoon, we arrive at Siguniangshan Town (四姑娘山镇), formerly known as Rilong, which serves as the gateway to Mount Siguniang. The air is thinner here, each breath requiring a little more effort. Our bus drops us at Shuangqiao Valley (双桥沟), the most accessible of the three valleys that radiate from the town.

Shuangqiao takes its name from two wooden bridges (one of poplar and willow, the other of red cedar) that cross the river deep in the valley. At an altitude of 3,200–3,800 metres and stretching nearly 35 kilometres, the landscape is undeniably impressive.

The valley is only accessible via tourist shuttle buses that stop at designated viewpoints. We board at the entrance and ride up through stands of ancient seabuckthorn to where the Four Sisters peaks emerge, a stark wall of granite against the sky. The local name, Siguniangshan, comes from a legend about four sisters who turned to stone to protect their village.

The final stops bring you to wide grasslands beneath the mountains, with small glacial lakes reflecting the peaks. Most people come to take selfies, inexplicably dressed in American cowboy hats, but we quickly escape and walk back down the valley along a boardwalk, covering perhaps around six kilometres on foot before the rain arrives and we hop back on the bus.

By early evening, we’re back in Siguniangshan Town, and check into a surprisingly modern guest house where I’m promptly foiled by the voice-controlled lighting, which only speaks Chinese.

Changping Valley

The next day happened to be the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Second World War, and everyone was glued to their phones watching the massive military parade in Beijing where Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un were being hosted by Xi Jinping. The whole scene felt as if reality had started to ripple at the edges.

Even out in this beautiful wilderness, we couldn’t escape the spectacle; it was playing on enormous LED screens by the entrance to Changping Valley (长坪沟), where we were headed for the day. The valley runs 28 kilometres into the mountains and, while there are horses for hire, it is best experienced on foot.

We start at the Lama Temple near the entrance, a Buddhist monastery that marks the transition from town to wilderness. Beautiful as it may be, the monastery sits silent with seemingly nobody at home.

The trail follows the river up through mixed forest: cypress, spruce, fir, their trunks entangled in moss that looks like noodles (松萝) suspended in the air. The path is well-maintained but uneven, winding over roots and rocks worn smooth by decades of hikers. Every so often, the forest opens where the peaks should loom above, but today they’re mostly hidden, just grey shapes dissolving into mist.

We press on to Muluozi, a clearing about halfway up. The meadow sits in a wide bend of the river, enclosed on three sides by forest and open to the south where the Four Sisters should fill the frame. Instead, mist drapes across the valley mouth, reducing the peaks to faint suggestions of stone and snow. We sit and listen to the water, trying to identify the birds flitting through the scrub.

We turn back before reaching the upper valley and walk the same way down in the soft afternoon light as the sun drops lower.

Back in Siguniangshan Town that evening, we sit outside the guest house with tea, watching the last light fade over the mountains, hoping the clouds will shift enough to reveal Yaomei Peak (幺妹峰), also known as the “Queen of Sichuan’s peaks”, standing at 6,250 m.

The peak remains shrouded that night, but the next morning the clouds part for a moment, revealing the sharp point of the summit in all its glory.

Mount Siguniang has a formidable climbing history, having claimed numerous lives over the decades due to its technical difficulty, unpredictable weather, and high altitude. The peak wasn’t successfully summited until 1981 by a Japanese expedition, and even after that first ascent, avalanches, rockfall, and sudden storms continued to prove lethal. Its steep faces and exposed ridges leave little margin for error, with local guides considering it more technically challenging than better-known Sichuan peaks. Summit attempts remain relatively rare, as many climbers are turned back and rescue operations at high altitude remain extremely difficult.

We packed our bags and hit the road, grateful for the glimpse we got.