Tourists going along those narrow plank things stuck into the cliff face. “via ferrata – metal rungs secured to the mountain”

It sounds like everyone got out ok, so this is my first thought after reading

I know we need to shit on China every chance we get but…

That is perfectly normal and it is clear that the team that let this article through has never been out to Yosemite or any crowded wall. I prefer to stick to the less crowded routes (and am not huge on big walling) but I’ve definitely run into a few multipitches where my partner and I kind of just hang out at the anchor waiting for the people ahead of us to get far enough that we can go again. And when they are taking ages to progress on a 5.9… we tend to wait until they are almost at the next set of anchors before even starting. I think our record was two hours because we were pretty certain we would have to rescue the idiots in front of us… and we did. Was basically wait until their leader was panicking and then jug up to get them sorted and then have them rappel back down with us because we didn’t feel like having to walk around their splatted corpses when we got down.

Also, based on the picture, this is a via ferrata route and they were part of a tourism group. For those not familiar, those routes aren’t “real” rock climbing as they involve staying constantly clipped in to fixed metal cables with a personal anchor and often involve using outright ladders. They (allegedly?) go back to World War 1 and 2 when troops would need to traverse mountains to get to the enemy. They are REALLY fun and I encourage them to people doing the tourism thing but you also almost inevitably get stuck behind someone because you probably don’t have the skills to clip past them to keep moving.

But this isn’t someone who is in direct on a single cam or even someone clipped in at an anchor. It is basically the equivalent of leaning against a railing on the side of the road.

“This is frightening! Someone like me afraid of heights might just wet myself up there!” wrote one Chinese online commenter.

If you’re afraid of heights, why the hell would you be up there? Wrong turn on the way to the corner store?

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Images of the climbers hanging off the cliffside as they waited for others to progress along the via ferrata – metal rungs secured to the mountain – went viral on Chinese social media.

Another commenter asked what would happen if one of the climbers fell and needed rescuing, but all were shown wearing helmets, harnesses, and safety gear.

Wenzhou Dingcheng Sports Development Co., Ltd, which manages the via ferrata, said it had underestimated the number of people interested in climbing the mountain.

The company added that it was temporarily halting ticket sales while it handled the situation internally, and would be rolling out a traffic-control system for visitors in the future.

Yandang Mountain is about 410 kilometers (255 miles) south of Shanghai, in Zhejiang province, and is 1,150 meters (3,773 feet) high.

The first week of May is the Labor Day holiday in China, which contributed to the large numbers of tourists in the area.

The original article contains 293 words, the summary contains 152 words. Saved 48%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

I clicked the link and was really surprised not be on the onion.

This seems like a great idea on so many levels…

At first I thought those two in the foreground were making out…