Ancient Web: Rick Archer's Huashan Page Turned a Scary Trail into an Email Archive

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

When Rick Archer saw photographs of walkers inching along the cliffs of Mount Huashan, he did not settle for forwarding the pictures. He built a long webpage, started asking questions, and published readers' replies.

Read Archer's Mount Huashan page.

The article identifies its first publication as January 2007 and shows a later update in July 2011. It opens by comparing Huashan to the author's own walk on Longs Peak in Colorado: one felt like a satisfying mountain hike, while the pictures of the Chinese trail looked terrifying.

The page gradually changes shape. It begins as a dramatic, image-heavy warning about steep ladders, narrow ridges, exposed walkways, and temple paths, but grows into a sprawling correspondence file. Archer asks whether the trail really is as hazardous as it appears, and readers send accounts, photographs, and questions.

A viral image becomes a conversation

A reader named Jim supplies a May 2008 exchange with Tongyan, who recalls a rescue involving students from a medical school. Another correspondent describes seeing a fatal fall at Yosemite's Half Dome, using the comparison to think about safety and crowding. The page includes descriptions of the different Huashan peaks, the cableway, and the notorious planked route near South Peak.

Not every claim is established. Archer explicitly acknowledges difficulty finding independent confirmation for reports of fatalities. Some historical descriptions and reader memories are unverified, and trails can change considerably over time. This should be read as a period document about internet discussion, not present-day route advice.

Its related dangerous-trails navigation links other old photo essays about the Guoliang Tunnel, the Bolivian Highway of Death, and Spain's Caminito del Rey. They belong to a web culture where dramatic photographs circulated by email and a webmaster tried to collect the accompanying context in one place.

The biggest achievement is not proving that Huashan is the world's most dangerous hike. It is retaining the disagreement, the individual letters, and the author's own uncertainty on the same page as the spectacular pictures.

The result feels like reading a forum thread that somebody edited into a magazine article, without erasing the correspondents.

Explore the Huashan story and its the other linked trail essays.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.