Travel Guide Mount Of Jade Dragon 玉龙雪山

The Chinese say that seeing the snowy peaks of Jade Dragon's Mount is good, because they are often hidden in the clouds! Fifteen kilometres west of Lijiang, these summits are the only mountains to be topped with eternal ice at this latitude. A cable car, located in White Water River, rises to the Chemin road. It is a long 700 m long wooden road along a glacier and leads to the "dragon fir meadow". This meadow of almost 1 km ² is a real mountain garden. In the spring it is lined with thousands of small flowers where graze yaks and Mongolian horses. In the space of only a few metres, due to the vertical terrain, there are spectacular changes in temperature by passing from summer flowers to winter snow. The area of the Mount of Jade Mountain has a wide variety of flora and fauna: 3 200 types of plants and 59 animal species. There are also about medicinal plants, including snow tea. These virgin summits have never been defeated, despite several trials of Chinese and Western climbers since the 1940 s. But today, on the slopes of the glacier, a summer-winter ski resort was opened in 1997 at a cost of $ 579 million. In the plain, at the foot of the mountains, hotels, tennis courts and golf courses are already built.