A 21-Year-Old Died Trekking Off-Limits at Yading, and the Internet First Turned on His Family
A young trekker who entered Sichuan's Yading reserve by an unauthorised route died of altitude sickness during his rescue. Officials confirmed his mother paid the rescue costs, contradicting viral rumours — the latest tragedy in China's wild-trekking boom.
The 21-year-old from Guangxi had entered the Yading nature reserve in Sichuan's Ganzi prefecture from an unauthorised route, trekking near Niuxi Ranch at around 4,600 metres — deep inside the core protection zone, where entry is banned outright. A notice prohibiting access had been issued in September. When his companion descended because of bad weather on October 10, he stayed behind, and altitude sickness set in.
What followed was a slow-motion emergency played out over three days and watched, in fragments, by the hikers passing through. On October 11 a stranger raised the alarm. On October 12, hiker Tian and his group found the young man in his tent, hypothermic and unable to eat or hold a conversation. They fed him water and glucose, and a passing horse caravan stopped to help; one passer-by, according to widely shared posts, offered to carry him down for 2,000 yuan, an offer he declined. His blood-oxygen level later reportedly fell to 53 per cent — a level at which confusion sets in long before death does. A nine-person rescue team of guides, doctors and firefighters, which could not drive in and had to walk, reached the tent around five in the afternoon. He died during the descent on October 13.
Red Star News confirmed the details with local police and the reserve administration, and in the process dismantled the story the internet had preferred. Rumours had spread that the man's sister had demanded a free helicopter and refused to pay for horse caravans; officials and witnesses said those claims could not be verified. What is documented is that his mother paid 7,500 yuan for the horses and guides on the way down — she had transferred 10,000 yuan in advance and the unspent 2,500 was returned — and that she offered rescue workers an extra 450 yuan in thanks, which they declined. Ambulance and hospital charges were waived.
That correction mattered because for days the family had been mobbed over a version of events that appears to have been largely invented. "The rumours were a tangle of truth and falsehood — verify before you speak, don't gang up on a mother who has lost her son," one widely shared post urged.
The story has landed at the peak of China's boom in high-altitude "wild trekking" (野线), where social-media-fuelled hikers push past park boundaries into terrain that looks photogenic and kills quietly. Altitude pulmonary oedema can progress from chest tightness to unconsciousness in under an hour, rescuers note, and every hour of delay raises the death rate — which is why the standard advice is blunt: when symptoms appear, descend immediately. "Every one of us should genuinely learn about altitude sickness," one post that circulated widely read. "Once symptoms appear, descend at once. Nature does not forgive."
The reserve has said little beyond confirming the death and the route's illegality. The open question is whether the lesson lands on the crowds still setting out — or whether, as one commenter put it, the mountain simply does not care.