Do you need to book Underground Forest & the deep pools in advance?
Yes — Underground Forest & the deep pools in Changbaishan runs on real-name advance reservation. A foreign passport works as the real-name ID. We have not found an official statement of when tickets release or a booking page we can link, so the practical route is your hotel front desk — and we say so rather than guess.
Verified 2026-06-13 · rules change; confirm on the official channel before you travel
The booking rule, in detail
- Reservation
- Required in advance
- Foreign passport
- A foreign passport works as the real-name ID.
- Official channel
- Not found. We hold the rule but not an official page we can link, and we will not link a reseller in its place.
How a foreign visitor actually books it
No separate ticket — these are walking stops on the North Slope shuttle loop, reached on foot once you are inside on your gate entry and in-park shuttle. Just bring your passport for the gate.
What else to know
We link no official booking page here — covered by park entry and shuttle, no ticket of its own. The Underground Forest (sometimes called the Valley Forest), about 12 km from the North Gate, is a short, easy walk of roughly half an hour down into a collapsed crater-like valley filled with old-growth trees — a good low-altitude option for a cloudy day when the summit is closed in. Nearby on the same side are the Green Deep Pool (a green-water pond fed by a small waterfall) and the Small Sky Pond / Silver Ring Lake, with gentle riverside trails of one to two hours linking them toward the main waterfall. These forest and water walks are the reliable, weather-proof part of a Changbaishan visit when Tianchi itself is clouded out.
If the official channel does not work
The two reliable fallbacks are your hotel front desk, which books these through domestic apps every day, and the on-site manual window where one still exists. What does not work is buying from someone who approaches you or from a marketplace listing: entry is real-name, so a ticket registered to another person’s ID will not admit you. The mechanics are in buying tickets the official way and booking without WeChat.
Other Changbaishan sights and their booking rules
- Changbai Waterfall & the hot springs book ahead
- Tianchi / Heaven Lake book ahead
- Tianchi via the West Slope book ahead
Full city context, hotels that register foreigners, and what to eat: Changbaishan guide. Release times across every city we track are in Reservation Radar.