Tianmen Mountain Cable Car

The Tianmen cable car starts in the middle of Zhangjiajie city and runs for several kilometres up the mountain, gaining well over a thousand metres and passing above the road known for its long sequence of hairpin bends. At the top, walkways are cut into the cliff face, including sections with glass floors that hang over the drop, and a chain of paths circles the summit through forest. Below the summit, a natural arch in the rock called Tianmen cave is reached by a long staircase or by escalators built inside the mountain. It is an engineered day out rather than a walk in the hills, and it depends entirely on the weather.

What you actually see

• The cable car ride - the long ascent over the city, the hairpin road and the forest below.
• The glass skywalks - short glass-floored sections of the cliff path, with shoe covers required.
• Tianmen cave - the natural arch through the rock, by steep staircase or interior escalators.
• The hairpin road - the switchback climb below the arch, best seen from above.

When to go

Spring and autumn give the best chance of clear air; in cloud the walkways deliver a view of grey. Tickets are timed and sold in daily quotas, so buy ahead and arrive for your slot. The glass sections close in ice and high wind. Weekdays outside national holidays are dramatically quieter than weekends.

Honest expectations

Queues are the defining feature, for the cable car, for the escalators and again for shoe covers at each glass section, and they can add up to hours in high season. Anyone uneasy with heights will find the cliff walkways hard going. Cloud regularly reduces the whole outing to a fogged-in walk, and there are no refunds for that.

Nearby

Zhangjiajie national forest park is about an hour away, with Fenghuang further south.