A hiking trip to the Great Wall

In the early summer of last year, my close friend Carol and I took a hiking trip to the Great Wall in Beijing. It is a long exhausted one but absolutely an amazing, well, how to say, once-in-a-life-time experience.

Our original plan was took one day to Badaling Great Wall, the most famous and well-facility one, but actually, we took 7 days in total for this journey, climbing 4 sections of the Great Wall in Beijing and Tianjin, that is, Beijing Juyongguan Pass/Great Wall-Badaling Great Wall-Tianjin Huangyaguan Pass/Great Wall-Beijing Jinshanling Great Wall-Mutianyu Great Wall. This travel strategy we just download from the internet written by an experienced travel fan.

We flew to Beijing on April 8 and landed on Beijing about 2hours later. Then we took a taxi to our in hostel Beijing - City Central Youth Hotel, which near the Tian’anmen Square and the famous commercial street – Wangfujing Street.

Get ready for our Great Wall Hiking!

April 9, a tour to Juyongguan Pass and Badaling Great Wall. We got up very early and took about 1.5 hours driving by coach to Juyongguan Pass, which was built in early Ming Dynasty (1368), stretched about 4000 m. Some of the framework was rebuilt in early 1990’s, but still remained its imperial manner thoroughly.


Before reaching the pass, we just can imagine how grand the building would be according to the descriptions on the books. On arrival, we knew that words were but wind. A high strategic pass (6 m or so) showed in front of us. As the time went by, some green unknown plant has rooted on the wall. We entered the gate hole, felt like we started a time travel.

As the whole construction of the great wall of this section was built along Jundushan Mountain, which noted for its abrupt descent and deep valley, we have to climb up and down, up and down. For one section, you could almost see the heel of the tourist before you – too steep.

As we have to tour Badaling in the afternoon, we only spent about 2 hours for climbing. After a simple lunch in a fastfood shop nearby, we back to our journey.



Badaling was the first section opened to public, well-preserved and has convenient tourism facilities. So we decided to go further this time. However, as met the weekend, that were too many people!

At the beginning, we tried hard to break our way through the crow. One hour later, we climbed faster, chatted and enjoyed the landscape changing. But another hour later, we were in no mood for doing anything else but climbing, walking…We took two short break to charge snack bars during that long hiking (Carol said we spent 3.5hours). My leg hurts after we got back to our hostel. Oh my! I have to climb the Huangyaguan Pass the next day! Carol felt alright. “Don’t look at me with your big green eyes,” she said.

April 10, we took express train to Tianjin, which only took our 30 minutes. Firstly, we checked in our hostel in downtown, then took bus to the bus station in Ji County, transferred to a small coach to reach Huangyaguan area. It was already lunch time when we got there. After that, we started our hiking along the Huangyaguan Pass (Great Wall).



At first, we kept our normal speed and took some photos when we sew something interesting. During the way, we could see a small village just locates on the foot of the mountain.

One hour later, we started to climb over a section of destroyed wall. Only half of the wall body been kept, and it seemed the wall bricks had been used up when reached this section that could only use big rocks to piled up.

We took nearly 1 hour for it till we reached Tian Ti – a very very high and steep stone way. My leg was painful and shook, so we have to give up and back.

That night, Carol’s leg was in pain. Both of us agreed that to take a rest for one day. So, on April 11, we spent a whole morning in the hostel then took express train back to Beijing.

April 12, continue our Great Wall hiking trip. Today we climbed Jinshanling Great Wall, with a total length of 10.5 km. As our legs not in good condition, we decided to climb only half of the distance then back, which took us nearly 3.5hours as we could not walk fast as usual.



It is said that the section between Jinshanling and Simatai was the best preserved one in Beijing, for its original look, thus we have many accompanies during the way, most of them are foreign friends. However, the Simatai Great Wall was just during the restoration.

April 13, hiking to the Mutianyu Great Wall. Our final strike for this journey! We encouraged each other and decided, after this climbing, should enjoy a really good dinner for celebration!