Ludong Mountain 吕洞山

About Ludong Mountain

The name belongs at once to the mountain, to the town at its foot and to a village. The summit, recorded at 1,125.2 metres, is marked by a tall rectangular rock column pierced by two holes, one larger than the other. Local tradition holds that the column was formed from the Miao chief Lidong, whose name is close in sound to Ludong; the resemblance of the paired holes to the written Chinese character lü is a later coincidence. The range itself extends across eight townships in Baojing, Huayuan, Jishou and Guzhang.

Geologically the mountain is built of marine sedimentary rock with gently dipping beds, inclined at around ten degrees, which a chief engineer of Hunan's No. 405 geological team attributes to Cambrian crustal movement more than 500 million years ago; weathering and collapse of these beds produced the hollows in the summit column and the cliffs and gorges below. Ludongshan is one of seven parks that make up the 2,710-square-kilometre Xiangxi Global Geopark, alongside Aizhai, Furong Town, Hongshilin, Shibadong, Luota and Tianxingshan. For the Miao it is held to be the place where their people first entered Xiangxi and the resting place of their ancestors.

What to look for

• The rectangular summit rock column pierced by two unequal holes, the feature that gives the mountain its name
• The gently dipping Cambrian marine sedimentary beds, visible stacked like pages up the mountainside
• The cliffs, gorges and springs below the summit formed as the marine sedimentary rock weathered and collapsed
• The setting inside the Xiangxi Global Geopark, one of its seven separate parks

Location & getting there

Getting to Ludong 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 吕洞山 with 湘西土家族苗族自治州 and 保靖县.