This attraction introduction is compiled from historical materials in the "Zhangjiajie Tour Guide Network" (33519.com · Scenic Spots section). Ticket prices, opening hours, transportation, and contact information mentioned in the text may be outdated. Please refer to the latest official announcements from the scenic area before traveling; some content consists of historical background/cultural introductions and is for reference only.
The Tianmen Mountain cableway has an inclined length of 7,455 meters. It starts from the City Garden in the center of Zhangjiajie city and runs directly to the primitive sky garden at the summit of Tianmen Mountain, like a rainbow spanning "the human world" and "heaven," and also like a giant dragon soaring through the white clouds and vast sky, clinging to the mountains and cliffs, rising straight up to the heavens, magnificent and spectacular.
The Tianmen Mountain cableway was begun on January 15, 2003, and completed by the end of 2004, with a total investment of 226 million yuan. Because the mountains along the cableway are towering, sheer, and perilous, and the geology and landforms are complex and changeable, the difficulty of design and construction far exceeded the ordinary, and the entire construction process was extremely arduous. The Tianmen Mountain cableway not only embodies the wisdom and sweat of Chinese and foreign participants, but also integrates the most advanced scientific and technological achievements of contemporary cableway engineering, and can be called a miracle and a milestone in contemporary cableway construction.
The Tianmen Mountain cableway combines the world's most cutting-edge passenger cableway technology. The cableway has a total of 57 supports, including 3 horizontal rescue supports. The supports are domestically produced, the main equipment is supplied by France's Poma company, the cableway steel rope comes from France, and the 98 gondolas come from Switzerland's CWA company, with a single unit cost as high as 200,000 yuan. The tensioning system of the cableway's haul rope adopts hydraulic tensioning, with one intermediate drive station, making it the world's longest single-line circulating detachable grip cabin-type cableway. The cabin body is 2 meters high, and a single unit costs as much as 200,000 yuan. The cableway steel rope is of the 6 × 36WS type, with a diameter of 50.5 millimeters, weighing 10 kilograms per meter, a cable spacing of 6.2 meters, and a cableway operating speed of 6 meters per second, running clockwise, with a spacing of 172.8 meters between every two gondolas, a time interval of 28.8 seconds, a one-way capacity of 1,000 people per hour, and a maximum climbing angle of 38.6 degrees, which is rare in the world.
The greatest highlight of the Tianmen Mountain cableway is the design of its climbing-face supports. These supports have a total of 96 pressing cable wheels and 16 supporting cable wheels. They integrate the most advanced theories and achievements of modern physics, modern engineering, and modern manufacturing, and apply the world's most advanced cableway technology, thus giving this section of the cableway an overall feeling of stirring the heart and soaring to the heavens.
At the same time, in order to respond to special situations that may arise temporarily, the Tianmen Mountain cableway has designed "horizontal rescue" and "vertical" [rescue], used to safely rescue tourists to the ground when the cableway suddenly falls into complete paralysis. This is currently one of the most complete and advanced rescue systems among cableways in the world. To ensure safety under special weather conditions, the cableway stations are also equipped with lightning protection devices.
