The Hike of My Life: Jiankou Great Wall

Yesterday was one of those experiences that I almost hate to try and convey using just words and pictures because I know there’s absolutely no way I’ll do it justice.

It all started out with a two hour trip out to the outskirts of Beijing to the mountain ridge of the Xizhazi Village. There we had an awesome lunch looking out over fields of lavender, ensconced by mountains, over the top of which wound the Great Wall. Pretty sweet scenery.

After lunch, it was time for our hike along the Jiankou Great Wall, an unrestored portion of the wall which was apparently important during the Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644). The agenda the coordinators had given us warned us that compared to other sections, the mountain was a bit “higher and steeper” and “more winding and varied”. They had no idea. Our first clue probably should have been the sign when we entered the village which read “This portion of the Great Wall is not open to the public”.

We started out what was supposed to be a two and a half hour hike up the mountain and across part of the wall, with an hour climb of bushwhacking and slipping and hoisting ourselves up a one and a half foot wide “path” of mud in the rain using the branches of trees. Our “tour guide” was a local farmer I think, who was just chillin’ and swinging from branch to branch smoking his cigarettes, while the rest of us were literally fearing for our lives.

In retrospect though, that part wasn’t dangerous at all compared to the path along the Great Wall itself. Usually, when people “climb” the Great Wall, they mean they walked along the nicely restored road which connects the picturesque turrets and took postcard like pictures to show their friends back home. We literally CLIMBED the Great Wall – unrestored, with rocks falling and a barely cleared path along the very edge of a VERY tall mountain where one false step could’ve been VERY bad news. (The program had never taken students to this section, and our coordinator was freaking out). Anyway, since nobody did die, I can now say that it was a pretty incredible experience – one of those once in a life time things you definitely don’t get to do everyday (and I’m not even sure I could do this again if I wanted to, since I’m pretty sure it was illegal to be up there in this location and our “guide” was in no way legit).

We were inside of a cloud most of the way, so the visibility was pretty poor, which was bad for pictures, but probably good for our psychological well being since we couldn’t see the extent of the thousand-plus foot fall endangering us. Since we ended up refusing to go down some of the ways the “guide” wanted to take us because they were just absolutely insane, we ended up trekking around up there for a good 3 hours or so before venturing down the same treacherous way we came up. (Sorry if this is sounding dramatic, but I’m not at all exaggerating – this was probably one of the most physical demanding and definitely the wildest thing I’ve ever done). I’ll let the pictures try and tell the rest of the story:

View from our table at lunch. Not too shabby.

Beginning the ascent


Our guide (and his cigarette smoke)




CLIMBING the wall. Vertigo much?



Ah!

So worth it from the top, though.

Attempting to navigate our way down. This was taken mid-wipeout. One of MANY wipeouts.

In other news, I found out this morning that a Starbucks out by a lake near us has wi-fi, which makes me very, very happy.