Zhangjiajie's stone spires were the real-world model for the floating Hallelujah Mountains of James Cameron's Avatar. More than three thousand quartzite sandstone pillars rise here from the valleys of Wulingyuan, in China's Hunan Province, many of them taller than 200 metres and one — the spire once called the Southern Sky Column — reaching 1,080 metres before it was renamed "Avatar Hallelujah Mountain" in 2010. The rock began as sand on a Devonian sea floor some 380 million years ago; slow tectonic uplift raised it, and rain, frost and running water then sawed the sandstone plateau into this maze of freestanding columns. Set aside in 1982 as China's first national forest park and named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992, it is one of the few places on Earth where erosion has left the land standing on end.
Walk the valley floor and the pillars press in overhead like a drowned forest turned to stone, their wet cliffs streaked green with ferns and clinging pines. Macaques patrol the trails for scraps, and after rain a sea of cloud pools between the columns, so that from the terraces of Tianzi Mountain the peaks seem to float free of the ground. Reaching them no longer means a long climb: the glass-sided Bailong Elevator, the tallest outdoor lift in the world, carries you 326 metres up a cliff face in under two minutes, and a separate glass bridge crosses the Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon nearby. This remains one of China's most visited parks, so the crowds are real — come at opening, ride the first shuttle, and the quiet columns are yours before the tour groups fill the walkways.