The day we got to Yubeng, we heard that a person had died in an avalanche on the way to the waterfall. The story we heard changed several times, and eventually seemed to settle on: 2 people dead, 7 people injured. The trail to the waterfall was closed off the day we were planning to hike up to it.
One of the injured was a man who had saved two other people by digging them out with his bare hands. The next day his arms were purple. He had apparently lost all his stuff including his money, so he didn't have the cash to hire a horse back out of the area.
A doctor from Kunming had flown in by helicopter the night of the avalanche as well.
The people that died were a couple. That's better than if only one of them had died. Unless they had kids.
Mark and I woke up at 5:45 the next morning to hike to the waterfall. Apparently, I slept through my alarm for about a minute, which probably pissed everybody in the room off. Too many days in a row of waking up early.
We managed to make it there and back in a bit under 4 hours. Combined with the walk back out to Xidang that afternoon, we walked something like 31km that day.
One thing we noticed is that there was no possible way for snow to fall on the trail. I guess that means that the people in the avalanche had intentionally gone somewhere more dangerous.
On the way out, we learned that the road to Xidang had been blocked off. How awful for the people living there that had been expecting the may holiday tourist traffic. But it explained why there were so many fewer people the second and third day than on the first day when we were hiking in.
