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!