Mount Song Sanhuangzhai Scenic Area 嵩山三皇寨

About Mount Song Sanhuangzhai Scenic Area

The Dengfeng city government calls it the most representative natural landscape in the geopark. The route through it is a mixture of temple and shrine sites, among them the Lianhua Temple, Qingwei Palace, Anyang Palace, Pangu Cave and Yuhuang Temple, and named rock and path features: Haohan Slope, Dragon Spine Gorge, Xiangmen Pass, Yixiantian, Feilai Rock, Camel Rock, Tiger Rock, the Three Immortals Rocks, a stone forest, a suspension bridge and a hanging walkway carried along the cliff face. It is used both for hill walking and for geological teaching.

That teaching use follows from the rock itself. Songshan Global Geopark covers 464 square kilometres and is centred on Taishi and Shaoshi mountains, each with 36 named peaks; the highest point of the range, Junji Peak, reaches 1,492 metres. Within less than 20 square kilometres the range preserves clear traces of three tectonic episodes, named the Songyang, Zhongyue and Shaolin movements and dated to about 2.3 billion, 1.8 billion and 570 million years ago, with the unconformities between them visible in the rock. Across 400 square kilometres it exposes igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks of the Archean, Proterozoic, Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic, a completeness that geologists describe as five generations under one roof. Songshan passed UNESCO's global geopark assessment on 13 February 2004 and the geopark opened that June.

What to look for

• The hanging walkway carried along the cliff face, and the suspension bridge on the same route.
• Yixiantian, the narrow cleft where the rock closes overhead, and Xiangmen Pass on the ridge.
• The named rock formations along the way, including Feilai Rock, Camel Rock, Tiger Rock and the Three Immortals Rocks.
• The Book Cliff on Shaoshi Mountain, whose clustered white rock columns look like stacked volumes.
• The shrine buildings on the ridge, among them the Lianhua Temple, Qingwei Palace, Anyang Palace and Yuhuang Temple, and Pangu Cave.
• The unconformity surfaces of the Songyang, Zhongyue and Shaolin tectonic movements, exposed within a few square kilometres of the range.

Location & getting there

Getting to Mount Song Sanhuangzhai Scenic Area

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 嵩山三皇寨 with 郑州市 and 登封市.