There are taller mountains in Sichuan and easier ones, but very few that combine a genuine five-thousand-metre summit with a trail that never requires hands. Dafeng — the most approachable of the four sisters of Mt. Siguniang — has become the standard first big summit in the region, and for good reasons that are worth spelling out before you sign up.
Why Dafeng is the standard first summit.
The mountain is 5,025 metres, which is a real high-altitude objective, not a tourist viewpoint. And yet the route is walking throughout: stone stairway, forest trail, open mountain and one fenced traverse on the summit ridge with a handrail on the exposed side. No ice axe, no rope technique, no crampons. The camp moves on horseback, so you carry a day pack while your tent and stove go up the valley without you.
The other thing Dafeng has going for it is logistics. It is about four hours by road from Chengdu on a highway finished in 2016, the base town of Rilong sits at a manageable 3,100 metres with hotels, and the park registration is handled by your guide — you attend in person with your passport, but the paperwork is not your problem.
What it asks of you.
Honest answer: legs, calendar and patience with the cold. The plan is deliberately unhurried. The drive west stops at the Balang pass, around 3,800–4,200 metres, for the first acclimatisation and the first sight of the four sisters. The first afternoon in Rilong goes to altitude the gentle way — a park bus to 3,800 metres or the 4,200-metre pass road, with a couple of easy hours up there before sleeping low at 3,100 metres.
The critical night is at base camp, 4,350 metres, reached after a seven-kilometre steep pull. Most people sleep imperfectly at this height. A good plan budgets for exactly that: the summit-day schedule starts around 3 a.m. precisely because nobody is sleeping well, and the afternoon before base camp is deliberately empty — sleep, fluids, warm clothes when the sun drops.
If you want to prepare properly rather than turn up fit-but-hopeful, the honest approach is an eight-week plan built around sustained uphill walking. We have written one down, anchored to the passes our routes actually cross.
The four days, compressed.
Day one is the road: Chengdu to Rilong, the pass stop, the gentle altitude afternoon. Day two starts at the park office, then up the stone stairway to the ridge with the whole Siguniang range in view, two to three hours of forest to the Dajianbao ranger post, and camp at Laoniu Yuanzi, 3,750 metres. In poor trail conditions camp moves two kilometres further up the valley to the lakes at Dahaizi.
Day three is the steep one: switchbacks through forest to about 4,000 metres, open mountain above, and base camp at 4,350 metres after four to five hours of walking. Day four is everything else — the summit, the descent and the drive home.
Summit morning, in the dark.
Out of the tents around 3 a.m. with headlamps. A gradual first kilometre, then two steep heads to the saddle at 4,800 metres, the fenced traverse with the drop held by a handrail, a flat stretch at 4,950 metres, and the last rise to the summit — three to five hours up depending on how the night went.
Well timed, the sun comes up over the summit: Yaomei Feng, 6,250 metres, and the other sisters named and lit across the skyline. The way down passes base camp for a repack, then the whole valley, reaching Rilong by mid-afternoon and Chengdu by 7–8 p.m. It is about twenty kilometres and ten to twelve hours on the feet — the biggest day by far, and the reason the three days before it are kept so deliberately small.
Season, price, next step.
The join-in group runs on fixed dates from April to November 2027 — the seasons that suit Dafeng — with two to eight trekkers, international only. The price is CNY 6,800 per person (CNY 6,200 booked sixty days ahead), the July and August departures run at CNY 7,200, and the same climb runs privately on your dates if none of the fixed ones fit.
One more thought: Dafeng also makes a natural second act to a winter trip. If your dates fall in January or February, the beginner ice course in the next valley over is the same shape of trip — four days, taught, no experience needed — pointed at frozen waterfalls instead of a summit.
Climb it yourself?
The Dafeng summit trek, day by day
Your first 6,000-metre peak: the ladder upward
Training for the passes: an honest eight-week plan
Altitude: how to travel high in China
All 19 routes, honestly graded