China 2000

Some good friends of mine from the Australian Army Alpine Association decide that trekking along the Great Wall of China in the middle of winter is one of those activities that is rarely (if ever!) done, and therefore should be done. A group of seven of us meet in Beijing in mid January. We move to an area of the wall called Jinshanling and commence our trek. The sky is a brilliant blue, there is about 6 inches of snow on the ground, and the temperature is a balmy 15 F (-10C).

The Wall is spectacular! It stretches in both directions along a ridge as far as you can see: an elevated highway in this mountainous terrain. We head west along the Wall, and stop at the end of our first day in a turret overlooking the village of Simitai and a reservoir. As the sun sets, the air really becomes cold. On this entire trek, the temp will never go over 20 F (-7C), and on the coldest night will reach close to -40 F (-40C). We bivvy in the turret, then are underway in the morning. We refill our water at the reservoir, which miraculously is not frozen, but the water freezes in the water filters, making this a slow process.

As we continue past the more heavily visited tourist areas of the Wall, its structure degrades to little more than piles of rubble, but the turrets remain intact. An unpassable set of cliffs on the 4th day force us down into the valley to try to regain the Wall at another point. We run out of time before we are able to find where the Wall starts up again, though, and head back to Beijing to catch our flights home.