Parts of Mount Hua are only reachable by wooden planks bolted directly into a sheer cliff face, a route hermits once used specifically because almost no one else would follow them there.
A walk built into the rock
The Chang Kong cliff walk, a narrow path of wooden planks fixed into the vertical rock with iron rods, runs along one of the mountain's most exposed faces, with visitors historically expected to hold safety chains and, in some sections, wear a harness, a route with essentially no margin for error that remains in active use by pilgrims and tourists today.
Sought out for its difficulty
Because Mount Hua's terrain was so difficult to access, it historically attracted Taoist hermits and ascetics specifically seeking isolation from ordinary society, and several of its more remote temples and caves were built or adapted as retreats for practitioners for whom the mountain's near-unclimbable reputation was an advantage rather than an obstacle.
The west of the five
As the westernmost of China's Five Great Mountains, Hua is associated in Taoist cosmology with the metal element and the direction west, a symbolic assignment that, alongside its genuine physical severity, cemented its reputation as sacred specifically because reaching it demanded real risk rather than only devotion.