China Installs Big Escalator to Make It Easier for Mountaineers

China – Recently, Tour operators in China’s Zhejiang Province have installed big escalator on mountain to help tourists gain access to the best views with virtually no effort. 

Mountaineers and tourists can climb hundreds of meters of escalators to reach the best viewpoints.Mountainous areas that were previously only accessible by climbing dangerous trails are now accessible to anyone who takes a few minutes on an escalator.

For example, Tanyu Mountain, in Zhejiang’s Chun’an county, has an altitude of only 350 meters, but due to the precarious relief, tourists have to walk three mountains around the mountain in order to reach the summit, making it inaccessible to the elderly and young children. 

But thanks, to the new escalator, anyone can now reach the top of Tanyu Mountain with virtually no effort.

“The original purpose for us to build this elevator is to solve the traffic problem in climbing the mountain,” a worker who helped install the giant escalator said. 

“In the beginning, we considered building a cableway. However, given cableway’s limited transportation capability and high-security risk, the escalator is relatively safer and has a high transportation capability, which can satiety the needs of the scenic area," 

Although the mountain escalators make sense from an accessibility standpoint, there are many who find them a nuisance rather than a boon. Hiking enthusiasts think that such contraptions take the joy out of the entire mountain experience because they require no physical effort.

Videos of the 350-meter escalator system at Tanyu Mountain recently went viral, but this is not the only such contraption in Zhejiang Province. The Shenxianju Tour Zone in Taizhou features a 104-metre-long escalator known as the South Sky Ladder that was installed about three years ago.