| June 29, 2008 |
Booking Date: June 19, 2008
Number of pax: 2
On June 29, 2008 Beijing Day Trips went on another Wild Wall Exploration day trip to discover alternative hike routes East of the back side of the Great Wall at Mutianyu.
From the village of Lianhuachi we first tried to go up towards the East, but after the first few watch towers lack of visibility by low hanging clouds, fog and rain prevented us from going any further. We did however find a watch tower in pristine condition, probably because it doesn’t see a lot of visitors.
At the foot of this tower we stopped for a quick sandwich and to pour the water out of our shoes and wring out our socks.
Back down we had a warm cup of tea and because it was still quite early we decided to try conquer that part of the wall from the other side. So we drove to the village of Shentangyu where there is a part of the Great Wall called Guandi.
Guandi village, which has a history of 600 years, is named after the defending army of the Great Wall in the Ming Dynasty reclaiming wasteland and settling down troops in this area. It has a total of 19 watch towers. The wall itself here is in not that great condition, but the watch towers are and basically you walk from watch tower to watch tower.
A short climb up took us to the first watch tower and from there it was a hike up via a path with kind of carved out steps in a soft rock underground. At the third tower those steps stopped and we more got the feeling of actually walking on the Great Wall. After 7 watch towers again low hanging clouds and rain made visibility drop down fast and thus prevented us from going any further.
Despite the weather it was all in all a fantastic day and we might use this experience to add some more new day trips to our program.
