After eight hours on Huashan, I’d stopped noticing the stairs.

I ran them.

Granite steps gave way to handholds carved into the cliff and rusted chains dangling over open air. A climber ahead of me turned back, defeated by the slick rock. I kept climbing until prayer flags snapped in the wind at East Peak.

Then I ran to South Peak, where the trees stopped, and the snows began.

Then I turned again and went West.

The quiet trails filled with tourists who had arrived by cable car, and I squeezed past them toward one last summit before turning back for Dani.

I’d promised her that I’d be back in an hour. It’d been fifty minutes.

The crowds thickened. My quads burned.

~

By the time I found her, she was sitting on a bench, trying not to fall asleep.

She looked up and smiled when she saw me

Together we made our way to the gondola station.

The entrance sat inside the final summit of mountain itself. Tourists poured out. Only we went in.

We expected to simply buy tickets and board.

Instead, an attendant stopped us before a painted backdrop showing the very mountain we had just climbed.

“Stand here.”

We did.

“You so beautiful!”

Then she looked at me.

“You so handsome!”

The camera flashed.

I glanced past her toward the station entrance. Outside, the actual mountain stood in plain view.

Before I could think about it further, a gondola swung into the station.

We climbed aboard, the floor tipped with acceleration, and we suddenly emerged into daylight.

The ground vanished beneath us.

Dani stared at her shoes.

I stared out the window.

Far below, the trail we’d spent all day climbing wound through the cliffs.

~

Thirty minutes later the gondola delivered us directly into a gift store.

Rows of souvenir photos covered the walls. Three-by-fives and six-by-rights surrounded by keychains and magnets.

And there we were, our faces windburned and covered in grime, pretending to smile.

The mountain behind us.

The wrong mountain.