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Mirko's Great Wall diary

drevil

Well-known member
Staff member
Hi there, i decided to make a dedicated thread to share my experiences, and of course pictures, of my hiking activity.

Here i will also share more background information.
Mostly it will be up to date info but maybe i will also post some older hikes insights.

Hope you will enjoy it!

Mirko
 

drevil

Well-known member
Staff member












After the let down last week, with the aftermath of a lot of rain, this weekend, we were blessed again with great spring/summer weather(in china this time is already considered to be summer)
Friday the officials asked people to stay home during the weekend and avoid touristic areas and areas with lots of people.
Well the areas i go do not have any people usually, so we set off.
We had the highway to ourselves, nearly, especially the farther away from the city we got.
This weekend i wanted to do some scouting again, an area that lies between two sections that i have done before.

When we arrived we were greeted directly by "red bands", people who volunteer or get paid to sit somewhere the whole day and keep people away from the great wall.
The reason being most of the time fire protection, this fire protection season lasts longer each year, now they extended it till the end of may.
Of course it doesnt help to tell them that we dont smoke and dont even have fire with us.

So we were sent away from the first entry point. Of we went to the second option that i scouted on google earth.
Surprise, red bands, Same story.

From far away i could already see people sitting at the third option. So my friend(last picture with 120mm APO wide open) and i went into the next path available, which sent us into a very bushy dry river bed, long story short, we reached the Great Wall after around two hours, a very big setback for my plan.

After some food we left into the direction i intended to go and we passed some really beautiful decaying towers.
Interestingly in this area there is very little actually Great Wall. Its mostly dirt paths that connect one tower to another.

Because of the two hour setback and the remaining visible path to still walk on, i knew this wouldnt end well. We hit a big massive rock, You can see it behind the tower in the second to last image.
I actually had a gps track, that showed an alternative route down, but when checking it out, the path hardly showed up, so i decided we need to finish the whole thing, at least cover the big rock.

Oh man what a ride, i was already getting weak and we had to climb to the very top, with some VERY delicate steep areas to cover, more than once i was thinking about turning around, but the tricky parts we covered would have been even more tricky going down rather than up. So i had to pull through.
Arriving on the top i had the maybe most stunning view ever. I could see so many different sections of the great wall i have been too, from high above, it was amazing! The good weather and visibility helped alot.

Continueing on the the path then was relatively easy, but we had to find a way down as it was simply getting too late.
I found a path and we just followed it, even though we didnt have gps track,

It then took us another one and a half hours to reach the next village.
It was getting dark already and i could make good use of my newly bought LED head light from nitecore(nitecore isnt sponsoring this post!)
After we reached the village we contacted the driver and let him know where we are, 10 minutes later we sat in the car and enjoyed again a car free highway and a record breaking time to get back home.

Wow this was a long first story, i guess the next ones will be more compact, as i dont have to explain everything anew.

Hope you enjoy it

And if you want to comment something do it, especially photo critique is welcome,

Cheers

Mirko

ps. the last image of my friend is actually on the top of this big rock, after we done it!
 

dave.gt

Well-known member
Love the photos and the backstory is excellent! :):):)

I am quite impressed with your diligence and passion for hiking the Great Wall. That is some amazing and difficult terrain. Wow!
 
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drevil

Well-known member
Staff member
Thx Dave,

things are easier when you love something! At the moment i really feel i couldnt live without hiking on the Great Wall, if they would ban us completely from entering it, i am out of beijing and china. nothing else keeps me here.
The whole work week is just a drag and the bright light is the weekend with a day on the wall.
 

P. Chong

Well-known member
Nice! Thanks for sharing, I took some pictures with ye ole Hasselblad back in the day at Mutianyu…will go look them up in my archive discs and post some to accompany yours. Which part of the Great Wall are these taken?
 

drevil

Well-known member
Staff member
Nice! Thanks for sharing, I took some pictures with ye ole Hasselblad back in the day at Mutianyu…will go look them up in my archive discs and post some to accompany yours. Which part of the Great Wall are these taken?
Those were taken in a region west of the gubeikou great wall.

No offence but i would like to keep this thread as a wild great wall hiking diary, mutianyu is touristic spot with the great wall restaurated(which i hate haha), i look forward to see your impressions in the general MF images thread though!
 

beano_z

Active member
......so can you tell us a bit more about the nitecore (whom, I understand, isn't sponsoring this thread) headlamp?
 

drevil

Well-known member
Staff member
......so can you tell us a bit more about the nitecore (whom, I understand, isn't sponsoring this thread) headlamp?
all i will say, i am pretty happy with nitecore products so far, and this is not suppose to be a gear review thread :)
 

drevil

Well-known member
Staff member
So lets do the first throw back of this thread.

This is our so called river hike, its located in the changping district of beijing, thats west of the center axis of beijing.

The images are from 2012, and they have a special meaning to me as they are especially important as a documentation. As this section has been disgraced by an effort to "restaurate" the great wall, under the pretence to protect it. It was actually a big scandal in the mid 2010 years, as large portions of the great wall have been restaurated, but in a half assed way (sorry for the term)

In some areas people reported they would be able to ride a bike now on the great wall, it had nothing to do with what the great wall actually looked like.
In my, harsh, opinion i would say the UNESCO should take away the status of world heritage for this scandal.

Luckily they only restaurated half of this part of the great wall, and the special thing about this hike is also its name giving, the last part of the hike is being done walking back through a gorge and partially through a river bed.

Its not a very long hike and very popular in summer to walk through the river at the end....and have the option of a shower to cool down







 
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pegelli

Well-known member
Hi drevil, in your last post the photo's aren't showing for me. Is your host site down or do you need to set permissions to allow general viewing? All but one (the fifth) of your second post show fine.
 

drevil

Well-known member
Staff member
Hi drevil, in your last post the photo's aren't showing for me. Is your host site down or do you need to set permissions to allow general viewing? All but one (the fifth) of your second post show fine.
should be fixed now
 

drevil

Well-known member
Staff member
Today i will give you a short introduction to our moyashike hike.
Even though i have been hiking with this group since 2010, i was introduced to this section only around 2017 i think.
Located directly between two of our frequent hikes this connection section also lies in the huairou district and is subject to more and more protection by the government and locals, who reject us regularely, but as usual, we find a way.

today even something special, as i was shooting a roll of Delta 100 at that spring day. it was a quite hazy day, but those days also give a special mood.

also cross posting in the fun with medium format film thread.

enjoy











 

drevil

Well-known member
Staff member
Hey guys,

didnt update this one in a while, i didnt go hiking for around a month, but yesterday i started again, below are some of the results and background info:



















so yesterday my friends and i had the chance to leave beijing again, after strict covid regulations stopped us from doing so for almost 1.5 years.
its actually an area close to beijing and one of my favorite hikes is located there.

but yesterday we did the section, which actually is the last official beijing section and therefore we call it the west end hike.

it started out to be quite a warm day, in the city it topped out at around 34°c, i think in our area it was a bit cooler, but we also had some nice strong wind to cool us down from time to time.
there is also a very rocky part, where people shouldnt be climbing, so we had to talk a detour path around this cliff.

after we finished walking on the great wall, we had to return to the village where we started,

a general problem of the china country side is, that the farmers are actually kind of dying out, young people leave their homes to seek for their chance in the big city.
therefore less farmland is being worked on and the path we had walked down, hasnt been used on a regular basis for years.
i remember it being bushy already last time i walked there but this time was absolute hell. chest height bushes, thorns, and insects, you name it, and this went on for i guess 1 hour or 90 minutes.

after pulling through we could still enjoy a nice sunset, which we actually wanted to witness on a different part of the wall but there was no time left to reach it in time.

as you can see i also tried IR photography, i am the one who purchased the achromatic+ back from marc in buy&sell, and after a two months odyssey it finally arrived in beijing.
unfortunately it seem the old c645 lenses are not "optimized" for IR, i just cant get anything perfectly sharp, even at infinity for landscape.
any tips for that?

until next time

mirko
 

AlanS

Well-known member
Stirling work mirko, the walking looks hell in places and that's not including the bushwacking! Really enjoy seeing your work and wonder if anyone else is documenting the wall for the future? Is there any "official" recording of the wall?
 

drevil

Well-known member
Staff member
Stirling work mirko, the walking looks hell in places and that's not including the bushwacking! Really enjoy seeing your work and wonder if anyone else is documenting the wall for the future? Is there any "official" recording of the wall?
there are some projects running, in the past and currently, including some very bad reconstruction efforts, yes the walking can be extremely exhausting, especially now in summer, in downtown it was 34 yesterday, so with some luck it was a bit less in our area, it said 29 when we started wallking(as we call it)
 

drevil

Well-known member
Staff member
Let me tell you about one of our longest hikes, the Long Hebei Hike!
Situated slightly 2 hours from Beijing´s city center, this hike is already in the Hebei Province.

It connects directly to the West End Hike which i presented last time. So its pretty close to the end of the Beijing inner loop.

As the name goes, its a pretty long hike, yesterday we spent nearly 8 hours to complete, but that included many stops to take pictures.

In the northern 70% of the hike there are no towers, or badly broken down remains, only in the southern part there are some tower ruins which can provide shade in the summer.

Enjoy the pictures, i will also post some in the fun with achromatic backs thread









 

drevil

Well-known member
Staff member
Yesterday a friend and I went to the famous Jiankou section in beijing, known to be the probably most beautiful great wall section in beijing.
Its very popular so usually there is a lot of people going there on the weekend, yesterday it was surprisingly not that crowded.

Half an hour into the hike, we heard the speaker announcements of the red jackets, telling us its not allowed to hike here and there will be punishment, funny enough it seems those red jackets were walking in front of us steadily and after an hour the speaker announcements vanished, leaving us in peace for the rest of the day.

The section is partially restored but there are worse executions of restorations i have seen.

after reaching the famous zhen bei lou tower we had to continue until the starting point of the mutianyu section, which is a official tourist section that is completely restored. when reaching this section we had to leave the wall and walk down a path, which is a heavy knee killer. with alot of photo stops it took us almost 7 hours to reach our driver.

enoy the images, some will be cross posted











 

drevil

Well-known member
Staff member
So in beijing, currently, we have the CCP party congress running right now, yay, people are being told to stay home and restrict their travels.
Like i care, yesterday i went out to the region around gubeikou, in the north eastern part of beijing.

as usual some red jackets were guarding the well known entrance points to the great wall, but this time i told my driver to just continue and drive us 100-200 meters into the guarded area.
when arriving a red jacket lady stood up but i told the drive to not stop and go on, when reaching the starting point we quickly grabbed our stuff and fled into the wild.

later on we actually came by lots of other hikers, doing the same thing, which proofs that the efforts to stop people from hiking are not working!

now is is such a beautiful time in beijing, tress are changing their colors and the night before some strong winds came from mongolia and we had near perfect air quality

enjoy the pics!











 

drevil

Well-known member
Staff member
Another Sunday another hike.
Yesterday three friends and i went to a section that i love, and hate.
The first 1-2 hours, its a constant uphill, covering almost 900m, this will drench you out for the rest of the hike.
I was rushing to this hike as i always wanted to shoot it during autumn colors, so now was my chance again.

in the past we had a lot of trouble with locals, as usual, so i looked for an alternative way on google earth and while it could have been better, my scouted path actually worked well and we managed to get to the entrance point easily



then the ascent started and i took a shot of the oposite track, that i also took in the past



after this picture, it was simply "reaching the top"



then we reached the most important tower with my favorite view, on the left you can see a settlement for the locals. lots of such settlements have been built to improve the life of the locals who had to abandon their old villages.



and the next shot shows the altitude against the starting level



but even though the worst was over, the next section was also demanding, in this shot you can see the tower from which the previous pictures have been taken from, its a long down and then up again




and from here its mostly nice views and downhills.



but there was also something new, usually we just leave the great wall after a certain tower and follow a valley down to a village, but since i dont know for how much longer i will remain in china and i know the great wall does still continue (duh) i wanted to do a short scouting trip and continued for 15 minutes and i could see that the great wall indeed still goes over a large rock, before ending at a chasm, but of course it continues at the next mountain oposite.





so the plan was to return and go back the usual way, but i found a red ribbon, used by alot of hiking groups to show where its possible to walk, and i decided to walk down that way and the path was super slippery due to a lot of fallen leaves. but the path was still shorter and less demanding on the knees, than the other path would have been.

so much for my this weeks trip

hope you enjoyed it
 

dave.gt

Well-known member
Okay, I have been distracted for awhile but I have been meaning to thank you for your diary of sorts on your hiking the Great Wall.

The photos and stories behind them are wonderful to see and read!

My appreciation of your efforts to share your experiences is opening up my mind and I have learned so much already about this magnificent structure. I can’t think of a better way for anyone to learn more about the Wall.

Many thanks!!! :):):)
 
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