Crowded With Visitors, Tourists Stuck In The Cliff Of Mount Yandang For More Than An Hour

Mount Yandang, China. (Wikimedia Commons/1961)

JAKARTA - The manager of tourist destinations in China decided to temporarily suspend the sale of entry tickets, to conduct an evaluation after a group of tourists were trapped on mountain cliffs due to the congestion of visitors.

Earlier this month, a group of tourists climbing Mount Yandang in eastern China were caught in the middle of a cliff, holding on to a rope along a fixed climbing route, for more than an hour.

Images of climbers hanging on the side of the cliff while waiting for others to walk along via ferrata, metal steps mounted on the mountain, went viral on Chinese social media.

"It's scary! My parents who are afraid of heights may end up there!" wrote an online Chinese commentator, cited from CNN, May 7.

"I wouldn't even leave even though I was offered cash to do this," said another.

Another commentator asked what would happen if one of the climbers fell and needed to be saved, although all of them were seen wearing helmets, safety straps and safety equipment.

Wenzhou Dingcheng Sports Development Co., Ltd, which manages via ferrata, said it did not predict the high enthusiasm of people to climb the mountain.

"Due to our mistake in assessing how many customers will come, the lack of effective traffic control such as ticket reservation systems and shortages in site management, customers are stuck and stuck on the hiking trail," the company said in a statement.

The company added that it was temporarily halting ticket sales to deal with the situation internally, planning to launch a traffic control system for visitors in the future.

It is known, the first week of May is a Labor Day holiday in China, which contributes to the large number of tourists in the area.

Mount Yandang itself is located about 410 kilometers (255 miles) south of Shanghai, in Zhejiang Province. The mountain has a height of about 1,150 meters (3,773 feet).

Being one of the popular sites for tourists in China, Mount Yandang was proposed to enter the UNESCO World Heritage website list in 2001 and remain on the tentative list