MAY 2023 · ADVENTURE

Vietnam - Sa Pa mountain trek: Day one

Hoàng Liên Sơn Mountains, Vietnam

The fog was there from the first hour. We started climbing from Sa Pa — at 1,500 metres already — and went up into denser air. The Hoàng Liên Sơn range carries weather from the north and holds it. In May, that means mist from morning through afternoon with occasional breaks that close again before you've adjusted to them.

Dense fog shrouds rainforest mountain slopes, Sa Pa highlands — Inside the weather from the first hour

— Ascending from Sa Pa

May Kim, our Red Dao guide, moved at a consistent pace on paths she knew by position rather than sight. The trail wasn't always visible until you were on it. Dense rainforest mountain slopes, the fog making the ridgelines into silhouettes. Misty tea plantations passing to one side, the canopy dropping away on the other where the valley opened unseen below.

Your world is ten metres in any direction and then white.
Sa Pa — May 2023

Misty tea plantations and forest canopy viewed from mountain pass — Tea plantations passing on one side

— May Kim's trail

The winding mountain path ran through vegetation that pressed close. Forested ridges disappearing into thick morning fog. Mountain terrain obscured by layered mist and cloud cover — the word 'atmospheric' is inadequate for what complete cloud immersion actually feels like. Your world is ten metres in any direction and then white.

Red Dao guide navigating steep mountain trail in fog — May Kim, navigating by position

Trekker on narrow path through foggy mountain forest — Scale measured by vegetation height

— Cloud immersion

May Kim is visible in one frame: navigating the steep mountain trail in fog, the path behind her already absorbed. In another, a trekker on a narrow path through the foggy forest, the scale made clear by the height of the vegetation on either side.

Forested mountain ridges disappearing into thick morning fog — Ridgelines reduced to silhouette

— End of day one

By the end of day one we could see perhaps fifty metres. The forest was loud with the sound of water moving somewhere. On the second morning the fog began to lift, and the landscape that had been hypothetical all day started to become visible.