July 22-25, 2010 - Great Wall, Huairou, Beijing, China

The 3 days I spent out at the Great Wall were simply amazing.  I'd researched the location in the Huairou district about 2 hours from Beijing and the place was everything that I had hoped.  In the first photo you can see a clear ridgeline in the background.  That's where the wall is - directly above the little village where I stayed, and it loops around in a semi-cricle from the West to East.  The first night I got there it was too late to climb but just seeing it up there - the snaking wall and the watch towers are quite easy to see  when you're there - it was just begging to be climbed.  This part of the wall is officially closed - there are massive signs erected by the local government reminding you, but the local guest houses survive on the visitors to this "closed" section of wall and freely dispense advice.  There's no-one checking on you so for all intents and purposes it's open.  For the most part the wall in this area is completely un-restored but most of the wall is in good condition with the towers partly or mostly intact.  Some of the steeper sections (and some of them are quite ridiculously steep) have collapsed and climbing up or down (especially down) can be a bit exciting.  In 2 hiking days I explored just a couple of sections around the guest house where I stayed and was enthralled the entire time.  Getting the chance to climb on the China's most famous landmark, marveling at the immensity of the project and the physical difficulty of building on such rough terrain and with only a handful of other people around was an experience that I'll remember for a lifetime.

View from the guesthouse at dusk

First up-close view of the wall

Zhangbeilou tower - the first destination and one of the more intact towers

Shrouded into mist - I'm going in there!

The mist moved away and wow!  Pity the weather wasn't a bit clearer for the photos but look at the wall in the background!

It's even steeper than it looks - the remnants of an almost spiral staircase section of the wall over a precipitous drop

Nice steps, but steeeeeeep

One of the semi-intact towers

Another tower (or part of it)

Some of the going was a little tough - note the patch of green in the foreground - its not easy to see the path due to the collapse of this section of the wall