A walk on the wild side

The most famous site in China is the Great Wall of China. As someone who has lived in China for over four years (total, not consecutively), I have of course been to the Great Wall. The most commonly visited section of the Great Wall is Badaling. This area is accessible by train and super easy to get to but tends to be incredibly crowded. (My mom and I went there in late June or early July and managed to find a section of the wall that had almost no one on it). Another slightly more difficult to access, but still very common section of the Great Wall is Mutianyu. I've been there before (although not in almost 15 years) and also to a place I can't remember the name of (it's been over 15 years since I was there), but it's where the wall comes out of the sea. Now each of these places is really neat and I highly recommend them, but they are highly reconstructed. 

Our first view of the Great Wall as we approached the top of
hills.

Yesterday, two of my co-workers C and K, and I went on a hike to Huanghuacheng which is a mostly wild section of the Great Wall. It was awesome. Matter of fact it was so awesome that we are already planning to do another hike in just over two weeks.

We went with a company called Beijing Hikers and I must admit I was a little nervous about using a tour group because I'm not really into the whole tour, stick together thing, but it turned out to not really be a problem. The way Beijing Hikers is set-up you can do the trip at your own pace. They have a lead guide who puts out red flags and a tail who collects them. You can be anywhere in between and the tail won't pass the last person so that you can go at your own pace.

Definitely not the typical trail found in China.

I'm not positive, but I think part of that is a really old, worn
down part of the wall.

 We drove to a section of the Great Wall that was about 2 hours northeast of the center of Beijing (which is about an hour's drive northeast of where we live) where they then provided us with plenty of water bottles and hiking poles. I almost didn't take a hiking pole, but I'm so glad I did. The hike began with about a 40-minute uphill hike to the wall (if you don't know, the Great Wall is built on the ridges of the mountains). One of the things I liked about this part of the hike was the fact that it was a real hike. Every other time I have been hiking in China it was on well-manicured paths with hundreds of people. This was a hike through the woods where you are pushing back the foliage and feel like you're out on your own (but there are other people nearby and the tail who will help you if you have a problem). Then we arrive at the wall. It was so cool! We were on a part of the wall that was built in the 1500s and hasn't been refurbished. I didn't realize how wild, wild was. The wall at places wasn't distinguishable as a wall (from on top) because there were so many trees and grasses growing on it. When then hiked a few miles to another part of the wall that was re-done in 2004. It still wasn't as "modernized" as sections like Badaling and Mutianyu, but it was definitely easier to hike on. We watched the sunset from the peak  (or nearly, we left a little before the sun finished setting) and then hiked down to the Shuichangcheng （水长城） section (note 长城 Changcheng means Great Wall in Chinese) where we had a well-deserved and delicious feast. While the uphill parts were steep and difficult, I almost think the downhill parts were the hardest. It was a challenging hike (Beijing Hikers ranks their hikes on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being the hardest. This was a 3+. The distance was like a 2, but the hills were like a 4), but if you can physically do it, I would totally recommend it.

It was a gorgeous day, unfortunately, the day was smoggier
than most recent days. 

We hiked all of the wall (and more) that you can see in this
picture. It was definitely a lot of ups and downs.

There was a giant LED screen down in the valley. I saved you
the pictures, but we were taking pictures of it and trying to see
what they were watching (I could see it pretty well with my telephoto
lens, but I needed a tripod to hold it steady for the image to be clear). As
one of my friends pointed out, give us a screen anywhere and
that's what will hold our attention. Sad, but true.

水长城

At first I thought C and K were goofing off. Then I realized we
were all walking like this because it was so steep.