The Jinshanling Great Wall (Winter Break - Part 1)
The biggest reason I planned my winter vacation trip to Beijing, China (to a place even colder than Korea), was because I wanted to cross off one of the things on my top 3 places I wanted to see most in the world:
Much of Jinshanling has been restored (like the other well known sections), but not as much as Badaling and Mutianyu, meaning we got to see a few sections of the wall that look original: old and crumbling. Also, Jinshanling is very far away from the city. It's normally about a 3 hour drive, so it attracts much few tourists.
On the day we chose to tour the wall, it had snowed pretty heavily the night before. The roads were covered and it was pretty difficult for our driver to navigate the steep, twisting mountain roads to get us there. It ended up taking almost 4 hours, but it was worth it! Besides a handful of photographers that we saw every once in a while, our small tour group of 8 were the ONLY people on the wall that day! And as a bonus, we got to see this gorgeous landmark covered in freshly fallen snow!
The total length of the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall is 10.5 km long. Our tour group had planned to do half of that, but part of it was closed due to very steep parts being too slippery from the overnight snow and ice. We ended up hiking a little over 2 km of the wall, and hiked another 3-4 km to get up and back from the wall itself to the parking lot. You can see in the map above, we started at the red star. Then we walked up the path to the arrow on the left, across to the arrow on the right, and then back down the gray trail to the red star again.
The Jinshanling section of the wall is located in the very mountainous area of Luanping County. It's about 125 km north of the city of Beijing. It's construction began during the Ming Dynasty in 1570. Although some of the walls construction had been started in the 7th century B.C., much of it has been built over again to reinforce and strengthen it through the centuries. Little of the very old sections of walls remain, and the majority of the wall existing today was built during the Ming Dynasty. An archeological survery found the entire length of the wall, with all its branches to be 21,196 km long.
Although we only hiked a 2 km section of the wall, it was a HIKE. The wall follows the tallest part of the ridge in between the peaks of the mountain, so the course has and insane amount of steep ups and downs. I heard that the other sections of wall in Beijing were friendly enough for the elderly and children to enjoy, but Jinshanling was challenging - just the way I like it! The stairs are all as tall as your knees and can tire you out fast, but for me the excitement and awe of being there makes you forget about all of that!
It took us about and hour and a half to hike our 2 km section of wall. Partly because of all the ups and downs, but mostly because we couldn't help stopping every few steps in awe of the view. Every time I turned around I would stand and stare for a minute or two, snap a picture with my camera, take a few more steps and then turn around again. I couldn't help it!
I took so many pictures, it was hard to just choose a few for the blog. So enjoy the rest without my captions, because I think most of them speak for themselves...
The picture below was as far as we were allowed to go on our tour that way. Because the walls on either side of the walkway beyond this point were almost completely deteriorated and the path was very, very steep, the park deemed it too dangerous and closed this portion. I can't wait to come back someday (maybe when it's a little warmer and greener) to hike a great length more! Maybe the entire length of the Beijing wall if that's possible!
- The Pyramids of Giza (Egpyt)
- Machu Picchu (Peru)
- The Great Wall of China - CHECK!
Much of Jinshanling has been restored (like the other well known sections), but not as much as Badaling and Mutianyu, meaning we got to see a few sections of the wall that look original: old and crumbling. Also, Jinshanling is very far away from the city. It's normally about a 3 hour drive, so it attracts much few tourists.
On the day we chose to tour the wall, it had snowed pretty heavily the night before. The roads were covered and it was pretty difficult for our driver to navigate the steep, twisting mountain roads to get us there. It ended up taking almost 4 hours, but it was worth it! Besides a handful of photographers that we saw every once in a while, our small tour group of 8 were the ONLY people on the wall that day! And as a bonus, we got to see this gorgeous landmark covered in freshly fallen snow!
The total length of the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall is 10.5 km long. Our tour group had planned to do half of that, but part of it was closed due to very steep parts being too slippery from the overnight snow and ice. We ended up hiking a little over 2 km of the wall, and hiked another 3-4 km to get up and back from the wall itself to the parking lot. You can see in the map above, we started at the red star. Then we walked up the path to the arrow on the left, across to the arrow on the right, and then back down the gray trail to the red star again.
The Jinshanling section of the wall is located in the very mountainous area of Luanping County. It's about 125 km north of the city of Beijing. It's construction began during the Ming Dynasty in 1570. Although some of the walls construction had been started in the 7th century B.C., much of it has been built over again to reinforce and strengthen it through the centuries. Little of the very old sections of walls remain, and the majority of the wall existing today was built during the Ming Dynasty. An archeological survery found the entire length of the wall, with all its branches to be 21,196 km long.
Although we only hiked a 2 km section of the wall, it was a HIKE. The wall follows the tallest part of the ridge in between the peaks of the mountain, so the course has and insane amount of steep ups and downs. I heard that the other sections of wall in Beijing were friendly enough for the elderly and children to enjoy, but Jinshanling was challenging - just the way I like it! The stairs are all as tall as your knees and can tire you out fast, but for me the excitement and awe of being there makes you forget about all of that!
It took us about and hour and a half to hike our 2 km section of wall. Partly because of all the ups and downs, but mostly because we couldn't help stopping every few steps in awe of the view. Every time I turned around I would stand and stare for a minute or two, snap a picture with my camera, take a few more steps and then turn around again. I couldn't help it!
I took so many pictures, it was hard to just choose a few for the blog. So enjoy the rest without my captions, because I think most of them speak for themselves...
The picture below was as far as we were allowed to go on our tour that way. Because the walls on either side of the walkway beyond this point were almost completely deteriorated and the path was very, very steep, the park deemed it too dangerous and closed this portion. I can't wait to come back someday (maybe when it's a little warmer and greener) to hike a great length more! Maybe the entire length of the Beijing wall if that's possible!
.JPG)
Comments
Post a Comment