【正文】 we saw a beautiful sunset and watched the sky bee resplendent withthousands of stars, including the milky way galaxy. this was the clearest skythat we have seen in china. the fresh air at mount hua is a treat!our guides had both been planning to get up at 4:00 am to watch thesunrise. fran and i made sleep a priority. we did happen to wake up a bit beforesunrise (our room faced east) and went outside to watch the sky bee ally, our guides missed the sunrise because they had stayed up latewatching the european soccer championships on the television in their roomthe plan for the day was to climb the other four peaks, but we reserved theright to shorten the route. the first part was a steep climb to middle the low north peak, all the others are at roughly 20__ meters. there werecrowds on the way to middle peak – mostly chinese hikers but we did see a fewother wai guo (foreigners) as well.we visited two taoist temples en route to middle peak. each one had analtar with incense and offerings of fruit. the friendly monks invited us to saya prayer or to send blessings to loved ones. fran accepted their invitation. atthe first temple, she lit incense sticks and knelt on a cushion in front of thealtar saying a silent prayer for our safe journey to the various summits ofmount hua (the prayer was answered). at the second temple, she knelt on acushion in front of the altar and sent silent blessings to several friends whoare experiencing challenging situations in their lives at present. after eachblessing, she leaned forward and the monk struck a drum.after middle peak, the crowds got much thinner. the next was east peak,which had a steep ladder climbing rock. fran was dubious about this ascent, butrealized that the ladder wasn’t so bad and went for it. that was a good decisionbecause we were then able to do a loop and the trails got almost empty at thispoint. after skirting the top of a cliff with a steep dropoff on both sides, wehad a pleasant walk to south peak and west peak. there was even a small amountof dirt trail! the summit of south peak was the highest point on mount hua, soof course we asked another hiker to take a photo of our guides and us. the viewsfrom the tops of each peak were beautiful. mount hua and the surroundingmountains are very rugged and remind us somewhat of hiking in the southwesternunited states or the sierras.we took a route that eventually brought us to the main line returning downfrom middle to north peak. we were happy to have ascended each of the five peaks(petals) of flower mountain.by cable car (the longest in asia), it was just 7 minutes down to the parkentrance. we caught a shuttle bus into town, then transferred to a bus forxian.our guides told us that we had walked up and down a total of 4000 stairs!we were glad that we did not have this information when we started. for threedays after returning home, our sore leg muscles instructed us to take theelevator to our fifth floor apartment rather than climbing the stairs.