Travel Notes | Traveling through the Leymus Leymus Mountain at minus 36°C

Brother Jiao likes the Northeast very much and has watched "Country Love Story" season after season. In the first winter we were together, I was watching the sunset on the frozen Songhua River with Brother Jiao. We were passionately in love. Brother Jiao and I said that you like the Northeast so much that we should come here every winter. In the second winter after we got together, the destination was chosen to be Mount Yangcao, where Yang Zirong fought the tiger in "Taking Tiger Mountain by Wisdom."

Snow Valley, also known as Gaosheng Forest Farm, has experienced the coldest winter in more than ten years, with the lowest temperature reaching minus 36°C every day. Snow Valley is not overly commercialized like Xuexiang. The mountains and forests are covered with snow, like an ink painting. Various snow entertainment projects, local delicacies, enthusiastic locals, and a sky full of stars at night will make you feel comfortable in the severe cold.

The food in Snow Valley is great. As a southerner, it’s not bad to try frozen persimmons or pears, or try the ice cream sold outside.

But the real treat is a little stupid chicken. A small stupid chicken is a local dish that is as popular as chicken stewed with mushrooms. Eating it while sitting on the kang is even more popular. A small stupid chicken in Xuegu has become a dish of white-cut chicken, Yuanyang copper pot chicken, grandma's Stir-fried chicken with ginger wine and wood-fired turkey are another delicious dish on the list.

The innkeeper also makes frozen persimmons himself, and puts them outside during the day, and brings them back at night to have frozen persimmons. Maybe because he stayed for two days, or maybe he answered some questions about cerebral hemorrhage while eating at the inn. Maybe the innkeeper is so nice. , we ate free frozen persimmons and various self-brewed medicinal wines at the inn for two days.

There is no over-commercialized Snow Valley, and the fees for snow entertainment projects are quite generous. You can play all the projects for one hundred yuan for a day. The important thing is that there are still very few people.

There is no need to rush to start hiking, it is worth leaving a day or two to have fun in the snow valley.

Compared with Xuexiang, I prefer Snow Valley. The blue sky and white snow, delicious food and wine, and brilliant starry sky here all make a pure southerner happy.

The location of the inn we stayed in was very good, very close to the starting point of the hike. The owner and the staff in the store were very nice and highly recommended.

After pouring this glass of water, we will leave.

It’s quite fun to be able to hike again.

Difference: In the past, most of my slightly masochistic trips started alone, but this time I went with Brother Jiao.

Difficulty: Except for the severe cold of minus 30 degrees Celsius, the hiking difficulty is average.

Scenery: When you are about to reach the top of the mountain and go down the mountain, you will see white snow, rime and blue sky. Although it is not as shocking as the plateau, it is stunning and romantic.

Top of the mountain: The snow on the ground is flying like sand, completely like hiking in the desert.

Photos: The following photos are from Canon 6D + Canon EF16-35mm f/2.8L II USM lens and Huawei P10. It's too cold, and you'll get frostbite if you take off your gloves to take pictures, so no matter what you take, it's still performance art.

Group photo: In summer, you can use a tripod and a wireless shutter to take a group photo of two people. This environment is not suitable, let alone asking others to take photos. It is inhumane.

The weather is nice and the sky is blue, which is important. There were many people hiking, and they didn’t stop much along the way. With the low temperature of minus 30 degrees Celsius, hat brims, masks, eyelashes, and hair could easily freeze.

Leymus chinensis mountain became more and more beautiful the further we walked, the weather remained cloudless and the sky was incredibly blue. The beginning of crossing the Snow Valley is a forward crossing, which is safer than the reverse crossing from Xuexiang as the starting point to the Snow Valley. The crossing route is often very narrow and steep, and the ground is icy and slippery. In some dangerous sections, predecessors have dug small dimples in the ice to facilitate walking and avoid slipping.

The scenery becomes more and more stunning as we approach the top of the mountain.

Brother Jiao doesn’t like taking pictures very much, so I often stop to click the shutter button. My phone needs to be connected to the power bank, otherwise it will freeze and shut down instantly. There is no composition or anything like that. It’s really too cold, so I just press the shutter button while facing the front, showing my hands. He couldn't stand it for ten seconds before he was frozen.

The camera was frozen, so taking pictures relied more on feeling. My hands were frostbitten that day, and I felt numb when I touched them. It took almost a year to recover.

When we reached the top of the mountain, Brother Jiao was already waiting for me at the restaurant on the top of the mountain. It was my first time to hike with Brother Jiao. Unexpectedly, he was more energetic than me.

I remember it was extremely cold that day, and it took a long time to recover from the cold at the service station at the top of the mountain. The wind was very strong at the beginning of the descent, and the snow was very dry and flying all over the sky. It was like hiking in the desert.

I met a little fat guy who was probably very tired and was blown sideways by the wind when he was going up a small slope.

Finally down the mountain, the wind suddenly became much lighter. When we were tired, we could sit or even lie down on the snow.

It’s not that cold anymore and I finally have the courage to take a selfie.

This is the starting point of the reverse journey, which is when we reach the end point.

The weather has gotten much warmer and more people are taking photos, so this is the only non-selfie photo.

The end point is Xuexiang. Xuexiang is still very beautiful, especially the night view. Except that the consumption here is a bit expensive, we did not encounter anything like cheating. Everything is clearly priced, which is good.

At night in Xuexiang, I still ran down to take pictures of the starry sky. Unfortunately, the Milky Way was not visible in the northern hemisphere in winter, and the sky was not full of stars that night.

The trip through Yangcao Mountain, starting from Snow Valley and ending in Xuexiang, just met our different preferences at the same time. It is also a route suitable for southern friends to see and play in the snow. After two people get together, a lot of changes will happen, and they will also change many of the living habits of one person before. For example, they no longer travel alone, for example, the destination is no longer always a plateau snow mountain, and the journey is no longer so violent. Tolerate and understand each other, watch different scenery and blow different waves together.