15 Towers of the Great Wall

A few weeks ago, the Beijing Hikers Club did a "level 5" hike, covering 15 towers of an unrestored portion of the Great Wall outside Beijing in under 5 hours. A lot of the first half was very steep, but the real difficulty in the second half was not the physical difficulty, but the technical difficulty - we had to slide along a couple of very thin ledges and walk downhill on flat rock with no footholds. The Hikers Club had warned we might need to use ropes; we didn't, but at a couple of points I wondered, "if we don't use the ropes now, when are we going to use them?"

I must admit, most parts of the Great Wall are starting to look the same to me now (except Ningxia's mud Wall!), but the structure is so old, so huge, and so never-ending that it still takes my breath away. Follow the link below to see more photos of the hike. For those of you who are familiar with the MuTianYu portion of the Wall, you can see it in the mountains in the background of these pictures.

15 Towers of the Great Wall