Mount Taibai Nation Forest Park

This guide to Mount Taibai National Forest Park outside Xi'an opens with a question: why would hikers switch off the one device that could save their life? It follows five hikers who slipped past a locked checkpoint on January 2 this year, climbing into the high ridgeline linking Taibai's summit to neighboring Mount Ao on their guide's advice, with phones set to flight mode so rescue trackers couldn't trace them onto ground they had no permit to cross. Fog rolled in, then snow, on a ridge hikers already call by a grim nickname. Stand at the park's marked boundary, where the forest is safe and the mountain above keeps its own score.