Fansipan Mountain

Mount Fansipan (Fan Si Pan), Indochina’s highest mountain at 3,142 meters, is located in Lao Cai province and presides over the Hoang Lien Son Nature Reserve. Vietnam’s loftiest peak is quite accessible, requiring five to seven days to reach the summit, staring from and finishing in Hanoi, an excited part of traveling Vietnam for those who like adventure and nature discovery. The climb itself starts in the valley separating mountain from Sa Pa, a popular Vietnam tourist destination. The path moves through a picturesque cultural landscape of steeply terraced rice paddies cultivated by the Black Hmong and other hill tribes. Leaving villages and farms behind, the route rapidly gains elevation and enters a forest that grown on precipitous granite slopes.

Conquer & contemplate

A unique assemblage of plants and animals lives here at Vietnam’s highest latitude and altitude. The tropic and temperate realms meet here, where the Himalayas taper to their eastern-most terminus. These high peaks support life forms found in no other place on the planet. During the past decade, scientists have found dozens of new species known only in the area of Mount Fan Si Pan.

Local people carrying
tourist's luggage to earn a living

Interesting bird species found nowhere else in Vietnam include the rate and endangered beautiful nuthatch, which lives in the cypress forests of the equally rare and endangered Po Mu tree. Po Mu trees once dominated the Fan Si Pan slopes, but their value as timber led to over-exploitation and rapid decline. Long-term protection of the range’s last po mu grove is part of Fauna & Flora International’s ongoing conservation initiative. FFI hopes to help Vietnam protect the cultural and biological diversity of the Hoang Lien Son as a "Man and Biosphere Reserve.”

Muong Hoa (Flower Hamlet) appears at 2,500 meters after a trek up steep gullies through Fan Si Pan’s mountain forests. This ridge is clad in a landscape, overflowing with mosses, lichens, and orchids. This fantasy. The rock outcrop on Muong Hoa offers a view of Sa Pa and the intervening valley. The path then enters a forest comprised of bamboo. The last 200 meters to summit is the highest place in all of mainland Southeast Asia outside of distant Burma.