Another Great Wall climb
Saturday, with both kids' sports on break, we decided to make a Great Wall climb that we have tried twice last year but were interrupted by rain and hail on two consecutive days. We checked and double checked the forecast, even though that would likely help us as much as it did last year.
We arrived in the Moshikou area without any difficulty. Easily we made it up to the first accessible tower from the path we took.
The thunderheads forming on the next ridge made us nervous, given our last two visits to this part of the Great Wall. And when we started to hear thunder, we decided to wait a little while in the tower to see if once again, storm gods would interfere with our hike.
More after the jump
As we waited, and listened to the growing angry sounds of thunder, we wondered if we would ever get to the crest of this hill. However, we realized there would be no rain, just a storm system growing in size until it met the right conditions to release all its rain and lightning. We resumed our climb.
It was, of course, exactly as we liked it, crumbly and unrestored.
We spent several hours, making upward progress. Every time I looked back to take a picture, I thought, "Did we really just crawl over that?"
And other times I'd wonder, "How in the heck will we get down?"
However, this particular hike reminded me more than once why I continue to come back to these kinds of places.
Enough of the wall had fallen away that we got to see some of the amazing construction details, like how this part of the Wall was built using rock chipped away from boulders on that very mountainside as fill. And in a few places the wall fell aways as though it had been sawed through, though it hadn't.
It made me wonder that if what we were seeing were the parting lines between built-up segments. It is a technique the Wall builders used all over North China in centuries past for tamped earth walls. Why not with these rock-filled as well?
Once we got to the last tower of our hike, we saw even greater use of the local rocks over the large cut stone or even grey bricks seen over much of the Great Wall facade. Here, at the top of this hill, it was even used as part of the regular walls.
And the lower portion of the walls inside our last tower of the day.
There were a few details around that last tower that I found irresistibly cute, if I could use such a description for one of the most famous military structures in the world. For instance, that last tower had to be shimmed with fragments of the chipped rocks. One of the world's great feats of engineering, shimmed!
Inside this tower, too, I swore I saw remnants of stucco over the local-stone walls, almost as though there was a painting-the-roses-red effort to create an illusion of grey brick uniformity.
Walking through the tower to its other side of this tower, we were surprised to see what we thought was another tower so close by. It was, instead, a gate, with another piece of Great Wall stretching away from it in both directions. The Wall we had just scaled intersected this other part in a T, something we hadn't come across before.
While I walked through this gate....
...and saw this,...
...Randy and the kids found their way above the gate.
I fairly quickly joined them above, and saw this other Wall going to my left and my right, and even more Wall in front of me that we hadn't seen on any previous visit there.
For some hikers, this position would represent a choose-your-own-adventure. They could follow this new section of Wall in either direction, or follow the trail that began at the gate underneath us, and seek out Wall that lay in front of us. For our family, though, it was time for us to turn back.
We arrived in the Moshikou area without any difficulty. Easily we made it up to the first accessible tower from the path we took.
The thunderheads forming on the next ridge made us nervous, given our last two visits to this part of the Great Wall. And when we started to hear thunder, we decided to wait a little while in the tower to see if once again, storm gods would interfere with our hike.
More after the jump
As we waited, and listened to the growing angry sounds of thunder, we wondered if we would ever get to the crest of this hill. However, we realized there would be no rain, just a storm system growing in size until it met the right conditions to release all its rain and lightning. We resumed our climb.
It was, of course, exactly as we liked it, crumbly and unrestored.
We spent several hours, making upward progress. Every time I looked back to take a picture, I thought, "Did we really just crawl over that?"
And other times I'd wonder, "How in the heck will we get down?"
However, this particular hike reminded me more than once why I continue to come back to these kinds of places.
Enough of the wall had fallen away that we got to see some of the amazing construction details, like how this part of the Wall was built using rock chipped away from boulders on that very mountainside as fill. And in a few places the wall fell aways as though it had been sawed through, though it hadn't.
It made me wonder that if what we were seeing were the parting lines between built-up segments. It is a technique the Wall builders used all over North China in centuries past for tamped earth walls. Why not with these rock-filled as well?
Once we got to the last tower of our hike, we saw even greater use of the local rocks over the large cut stone or even grey bricks seen over much of the Great Wall facade. Here, at the top of this hill, it was even used as part of the regular walls.
And the lower portion of the walls inside our last tower of the day.
There were a few details around that last tower that I found irresistibly cute, if I could use such a description for one of the most famous military structures in the world. For instance, that last tower had to be shimmed with fragments of the chipped rocks. One of the world's great feats of engineering, shimmed!
Inside this tower, too, I swore I saw remnants of stucco over the local-stone walls, almost as though there was a painting-the-roses-red effort to create an illusion of grey brick uniformity.
Walking through the tower to its other side of this tower, we were surprised to see what we thought was another tower so close by. It was, instead, a gate, with another piece of Great Wall stretching away from it in both directions. The Wall we had just scaled intersected this other part in a T, something we hadn't come across before.
While I walked through this gate....
...and saw this,...
...Randy and the kids found their way above the gate.
I fairly quickly joined them above, and saw this other Wall going to my left and my right, and even more Wall in front of me that we hadn't seen on any previous visit there.
For some hikers, this position would represent a choose-your-own-adventure. They could follow this new section of Wall in either direction, or follow the trail that began at the gate underneath us, and seek out Wall that lay in front of us. For our family, though, it was time for us to turn back.
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