Huangshan (Yellow Mountain),
Anhui, China

10. Forested Slopes of Huangshan

Huangshan is the most picture-perfect of Chinese mountain, so rife with bizarre rock forms, sword-point peaks, and deep fissures that it resembles a giant's game of pick-up sticks. Surmounting its 77 peaks requires days of climbing the stairs up the steep sides of immense granite pillars and the crossing of stone ladders floating on an everglade of clouds. As the Tang poet LI Bai proclaimed 12 centuries ago, the first ancients to scale these flowery peaks must have been astounded to find that they could look down upon the sky.