Jié duàn yún xī, fēi liú zhí xià; rén xíng bǎn lù, xīn zài bàn kōng. — Where the cloud-path breaks, the flying fall drops straight; the walker on the plank road, the heart at mid-sky.
Feidu Gorge (飞渡峡, Fēidù Xiá) is the waterfall reach that runs down from the Huang’anba plateau — unrated, open 08:00–18:00, and free, a gorge of successive falls and pools whose water carries the plateau’s clarity straight into the valley. It is Huang’anba’s lower half: the same mountain seen as a watercourse rather than a pasture, and the natural pairing on any itinerary that climbs to the grassland.
The gorge’s transparency is a limestone story with a mountain twist. The plateau’s rainwater sinks through the Daba range’s soluble rock, resurfaces cold and filtered, and arrives in the gorge stripped of sediment — the result is the green-blue clarity that the name “flying crossing” (飞渡) evokes in motion. The falls themselves are small to medium rather than single-drop spectacles; the pleasure is the accumulation, pool after pool, each one clear enough to count the stones on its floor.
The gorge is the cool half of the pairing — locals climb to the grassland for the sky and come down to Feidu for the water, and the two make one day. The path is wet and the stone is polished; footwear with grip matters more than stamina. Water volume follows the rain, so the falls are at their strongest after a wet spell and merely pretty in a dry August.
flowcloud would say that the mountain keeps its water and its sky on two floors — and that Feidu is the staircase between them, built by the rain.
Practicalities
- Rating: unrated
- Tickets: free
- Opening hours: 08:00–18:00
- Address: the waterfall reach below Huang’anba, southern county (checked October 2026, subject to change)
- Time needed: 2–3 hours; best combined with a morning on the grassland
Words and Names
飞渡峡 Fēidù Xiá — Feidu Gorge, the waterfall reach · 瀑布 pùbù — waterfall, the gorge’s accumulation · 黄安坝 Huáng’ānbà — the pasture above, the gorge’s upper watershed · 碧潭 bìtán — jade pool, the gorge’s still-water units