Chu Yang Sin National Park

On the map of Đắk Lắk, one stretch of mountains is known to the people of the Central Highlands as the green roof. It is the Chư Yang Sin range.

Chư Yang Sin National Park lies about 60 kilometers southeast of the city of Buôn Ma Thuột. It spreads across the Krông Bông and Lắk areas of the province. In 2002 it was upgraded from a nature reserve to a national park, under Decision 92. The core area covers 58,947 hectares. Around it lies a buffer zone of 183,479 hectares.

The goal written into the decision is to preserve a model example of the high mountain forest ecosystem of the Central Highlands. It is also to protect wild animals and plants, and to guard the headwaters of the Srêpôk river system, which flows on to the Mekong. This is not only a place for trekking. Above all, it is a special-use forest with a duty to conserve. Special-use forest is the class of forest that Vietnam keeps mainly for conservation and scientific research.

Local people pass down an explanation of the name Chư Yang Sin: the Gateway to the Sky. It is a cultural image. The deeper a person goes into the mountains, the smaller they feel before the forest, the clouds, the sound of streams and the towering layers of ancient trees.

The park has recorded 951 species of plants and 487 species of animals. Some of them are not easy to find anywhere else in Vietnam. Two are the leopard and the clouded leopard. Others are the chà vá chân đen and the gấu ngựa. The bò tót lives there too. Among the plants, the forest nurtures bách xanh and pơ mu trees. Du sam núi and sao cát grow there as well. So do giáng hương trees. These trees have lived through many generations of people. The park also lies in the Da Lat Plateau endemic bird area, where the songs of rare birds ring out every early morning in the mist.

The scenery of Chư Yang Sin changes as the land rises. Below 800 meters the forest is semi-deciduous and semi-evergreen. Higher up, it turns to dense evergreen forest. Higher still, conifers such as pơ mu, Da Lat pine and three-needle pine slowly appear, and they veil the slopes in a deep, quiet green. This change in vegetation with height is very typical of the southern Trường Sơn mountains.

The summit of Chư Yang Sin stands 2,442 meters high, one of the highest peaks in the Central Highlands. The way up follows the Krông Kma upstream. It passes through bamboo thickets, runs along old forest, and crosses waterfalls before it reaches the place where cloud and earth meet. It is a climb for those ready to listen to every breath of the mountain.

The story of Chư Yang Sin does not lie in the biggest ancient trees or the hardest path. It lies in the feeling of standing inside a forest that was here long before anyone arrived. Clouds still drift over the canopy as they have for hundreds of years. The sound of water at the foot of the mountain still rings out the same, whoever is listening.