Nangong Mountain 南宫山

About Nangong Mountain

An Ankang municipal government entry, filed under its national A-level scenic area listings and credited to Langao County, gives the park an operating area of 7,648 hectares and names its five scenic areas as 二郎坪, 金顶, 火山石, 高山栎 and 莲花寨.

It says the park is known for the preserved body of the monk 弘一, for traces of repeated Palaeozoic volcanic eruptions, for Quaternary glacial remains and for old-growth secondary forest, and that after 13 years of work by the Langao county state forestry farm it has become a destination for the Shaanxi-Sichuan-Hubei-Chongqing border area. It adds that a Daoist temple was first built on the mountain in 1126, that the site gradually became Buddhist by the Qing, and that 弘一 died at the 莲花盆 on the 金顶 in 1820, his body not decaying for a century.

The municipal entry gives the main peak 金顶 as 2,267.4 m, with two flanking peaks so that the three stand like a brush rack, and says the slopes on both sides carry stone forest formed by eruptions 420 million years ago. It says the south slope has large, well-preserved glacial features – cirques, arêtes, hollows, troughs and moraine – which it calls the most typical Quaternary glacial remains in the Daba mountains, and that the combination of Palaeozoic volcanic and Quaternary glacial landforms on one mountain is rarely seen in China.

It counts more than 1,800 species of seed plant and more than 300 species of wild animal, with 31 rare or endangered plants including 珙桐, 红豆杉, 麦吊云杉, 鹅掌楸, 银杏, 延龄草 and 野大豆, and 28 rare animals including 金钱豹, 苏门羚, 灵猫, 金雕, 锦鸡 and 大鲵.

The county page describes the mountain as having abrupt peaks and dense forest and compares it to 华山 for steepness, 泰山 for grandeur, 黄山 for strangeness and 峨嵋 for elegance. Neither source gives opening hours, tickets or which trails are open, and the comparisons and the account of the monk are the pages' own.

What to look for

• The 金顶, the 2,267.4 m main peak the municipal entry describes with two flanking peaks.
• The stone forest on the slopes, formed, as the entry says, by eruptions 420 million years ago.
• The glacial features on the south slope – cirques, arêtes, hollows, troughs and moraine.
• 二郎坪, 金顶, 火山石, 高山栎 and 莲花寨, the five scenic areas the entry names.

Location & getting there

Getting to Nangong Mountain

Check weather, trail access and the last return service. A mountain or forest area is not one entrance, and a map’s central pin may be far from the trailhead.

• Search for 南宫山 with 安康市 and 岚皋县.