Fansipan Cable Car

The cabin lifts gently away from the platform at Mường Hoa station. The floor of the valley slides out from under it, and the sea of cloud over the Hoàng Liên range spills past the glass on both sides. This is the Fansipan cable car, rising from the Mường Hoa valley to a point near the summit of Fansipan, in Sa Pa, Lào Cai Province.

The cable car is modern transport infrastructure. The mountain is something else. It is a natural feature 3,143 meters high, inside Hoàng Liên National Park, and it was there long before any line was strung across it. This story is about the small cabin, and the cable that joins it to what people call the roof of Indochina.

According to the Lào Cai newspaper, the cable car opened on February 2, 2016. Before that, reaching the top meant a trek of two to three days through primeval forest. Since the line began running, even a family with an elderly member or a small child can get close to the summit in about 15 minutes.

The same newspaper gives the main figures. The line is 6,292.5 meters long, a little over six kilometers. The height difference between the lower station and the upper station is 1,410 meters. It is a three-rope cable car, built by Doppelmayr Garaventa, a Swiss company.

The Lào Cai newspaper adds that, as soon as the line opened, Guinness recorded two world records for three-rope cable cars. One record was for the longest line, the other for the greatest height difference, both at that time.

As the cabin travels, the terraced fields of Mường Hoa appear below, then evergreen forest, then subtropical forest, and then the dwarf forest of the high mountain. Some days the fog is thick, and the cabin passes straight through deep white cloud. At other moments the cloud breaks, and the Hoàng Liên Sơn range lies in layers all the way to the horizon.

The higher the cabin climbs, the colder and thinner the air becomes. Wind from the Hoàng Liên Sơn range comes in through the gap at the door, and cloud rolls up and vanishes in a blink. The cold up here is not the cold of the valley. It is sharp and clear, as if the passengers were reaching out to touch the sky.

The arrival station sits right beside the summit. Stepping out of the cabin, a passenger meets the wind full in the face. Ahead, the range stands in tiers to the far edge of the sky, and the white cloud lies lower than the ground underfoot.

The Nhân Dân newspaper says this cable car is what turned Sa Pa from a specialist trekking spot into a destination where several generations of one family can reach the top together.

Fifteen minutes instead of two days on foot. But when the cabin door opens at an altitude of 3,143 meters, the mountain is still the mountain. The wind is still there, and the cloud, and the dizzying feeling of having stepped onto the roof of Indochina.