Hiking on
Great Wall had been my big dream for a long time, and once we figured
that there's nothing scheduled for us on the weekend, I started checking for options
for 2-day hike. Luckily my classmate had a good tip from her friend: a 2-day
trip including camping on the wall. First I was hesitating a bit, since hiking
only couple of hours the both days sounded a bit too short for me (you probably
already know that I’m that all in or nothing kind of person 😅). I decided to
join, since the price was quite cheap and some other classmates were going
there anyways.
A bus
picked us up from about 3 km away from our hotel and we drove about 1,5 – 2 hours to
a tiny village called Chenjiapucun. There we got the tents, sleepingbags and some more water and
started walking around 15:00. The trip was supposed to start earlier, but since
it was about 35 degrees, the pick-ups were delayed with about 2 hours. Probably
good, since it was still really hot.
The first
15 min we walked along a road, but since we saw the Great Wall very high on top
of the hills, it was quite obvious that it wouldn’t be that flat the whole way.
We were about 45 in the group, including two 10-year-old boys, who were not too
prepared for the hike. I felt so bad for them carrying the tents, etc. on their
hands that I offered to take first one “mattress” and then one tent, since I
was able to hang those to my backpack (did regret this couple of times later
on, but it would’ve been close to impossible for them to climb with the stuff).
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| Left: Destination from starting point. Middle: Carrying all my stuff with style :D Right: Here starts the climb. |
We weren’t
informed that it was going to be a serious climbing and hiking crazy steep
paths, but as we arrived to the Wall (which resembled more of a stone pile
there) and saw the path and hill, we started to figure what was ahead of us.
Still probably none of us really knew what challenges were waiting for us over
the next couple of hours. We started together as a group, but quite soon some
kind of “speed groups” started to form. I was with the first group with about 8
people and a local villager leading the group. The good thing there is that
there is only one path along the ruins of the Great Wall, so it’s close to
impossible to get lost. We had one guide leading and one with the last ones.
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| Climbing the Wall, which is mostly a pile of rocks, and some amazing views on the way. |
Every now
and then we stopped to wait for others, catch our breaths and enjoy the views,
but after a while we just passed the leader, since she was constantly stopping
in very random spots. Like when she reached the flat spot and the rest of us
were still on a very steep hill with our legs already shaking and just wanted
to keep moving instead of collapsing there :D The last hour was definitely the
hardest one, since climbing with all four limbs was necessary in many parts.
And I can tell, that doing something close to bouldering with shaking legs and
all the baggage was definitely not easy. But after a bit more than 2,5 hours,
4,5 km and 515 meters of altitude our group finally reached the top. Realizing
that we made it AND seeing the breathtaking views just made me feel super
happy. And the views totally made it worth every single second of the climb.
Warm beer had never tasted that good!
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| Made it! The starting point is around in the middle, towards the electric lines. |
We waited
there for everyone to arrive, and last ones made it in about 4 hours total.
After eating some snack, resting and taking a lot of photos, we headed a bit
further to our camping area. Most stayed in the tower, but our group of 8
(studymates) set our camp a bit further up. The evening consisted of chilling,
eating some cup noodles and helping a kid with an unfortunate incident that led
to heavy bleeding. Luckily the situation calmed down soon and people had some
first aid supplies with them.
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| Left: our tentplace. Right: our guide cooking water for our delicious noodle cups. |
Probably
the coolest part of the whole trip was just lying there on the wall with
friends for hours and watching stars. We just took our sleeping bags there once
it was getting a bit chilly. And it felt so amazing to breath and actually get
some oxygen in after coughing my lungs out because of the bad air quality in
Beijing. We even witnessed some shooting stars and got to know some fun facts
about satellites from our walking Wikipedia :D Finally around 1 am we got to
our tents to get some sleep.
We got up
at 4 am to see the sunrise and walked about 10 min for a better view. As it was
very foggy, the sunrise wasn’t as cool as the sunset, but it was still worth
waking up. As the sun got up it was quickly getting really hot, so no way we
were going back to tents to boil. It was a nice morning, just chilling and
enjoying the views, but we could’ve started walking a lot earlier to avoid the
hottest moments. Finally at 9 am we started walking along the wall for some
more stairs (going down the stairs was a real struggle with tired legs). After
about 20 min it changed to a path and it was quite easy just going downhill and
trying to avoid slipping on the path. Our group reached the bus in less than an
hour.
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| Sunrise (4am) |
Once we got
the group together, the bus drove us back to the village for lunch and further
back to Beijing. I can tell that shower and scrubbing off all the dirt and
sweat felt really good. This was definitely one of the top things I have ever
experienced and will be a really hard one to beat. I think the extreme hike up
made it even more unique and rewarding, but wouldn’t recommend it to anyone not
in shape (and willing) to do the crazy climb. We also learned that camping on
the wall is not legal, but lot of people still do it. This experience was
definitely worth breaking the law. Thanks for the great group and CET for
organizing! And special thanks to Andy for carrying hos drone all the way so we
can enjoy the amazing photos and videos.
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| TUM survivors, tired but super happy |
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| Both pictures taken from the same spot: left is the renovated part and right how it mostly looks like. |
