this is a video of Stuart Wiggins of Youtube channel The China Traveller attempting to climb the staircase to the village of Atulie’er, which sits 800-meters (2,624 feet, ~half a mile) vertically on a mountaintop, accessible only by 2,556 steps constructed of tubular steel (each step consisting of two parallel pipes which are terrifying in their own right). Some more info while I purposefully sabotage the StairMasters at the gym so my personal trainer can’t make me use them:

I went in search of Atulie’er village, a village situated on the edge of a cliff in Sichuan’s Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture. However, the only way to get there is to climb an insanely steep mountain ladder made from metal scaffolding. …On my climb, I bumped into people carrying washing, crates of soft drinks, and even a BED! That’s an 800-meter journey upwards, along scaffolding, in order to deliver a bed!… I’m not going to lie. It was tough!

Tough indeed — so tough Staurt only makes it about halfway up before stopping (and talking to a man casually sitting on a handrail of certain death) and turning around to go back down. Admittedly though, he made it a lot further than I would have, which would have been not even one foot off the bus that brought us to the village at the bottom of the stairs.