China Day 5 - Hiking the Great Wall - Jinshanling to Simatai

 

The next morning we awoke early and caught a cab to Downtown Backpackers where we met up with our tour group for the trip to the Great Wall. An hour long trip in a mini-bus found us at the beginning of the Jinshanling - Simatai hike where we met up with our guide (who it soon became apparent was less of a 'guide' and more of a 'insurance that this group of tourists stays together and makes it to Simatai in the requisite 4 hours). When we started up the stairs to the first part of the wall, I began to fear that my aching feet, the frigid temperatures or simply the length of the walk would lead to a less than enjoyable trip, but at the first glace of the view from the top of the wall, I was awestruck and happy to trudge along the sometimes incredibly steep steps to the next vista along the wall.


The hike from Jinshanling to Simatai can be done in a relatively leisurely pace in about four hours and is a mixture of level walks along the top of the wall, stops inside the numerous guard posts for pictures and steep ascents and descents of stairways of 13 inch high steps very much like those of the Inca Trail leaving one to ponder, "weren't people supposed to be shorter thousands of years ago...?" Everywhere we turned the Great Wall trailed off into the distance through a beautiful expanse of mountain ranges and a deep clear blue sky.

At the end of the hike, I was at once glad to be finished and not having to continue on along the impossibly steep portion of the wall that continues after Simatai and disappointed that our trip had come to an end. We had been told that we had two options to exit the wall at Simatai, one being a rather long stone ramp and the other being a much faster zip line across the river. Steven and I had initially been in complete agreement on the zip line, but once standing at the summit of our final peak and visually following the line down across the lake, we both seemed to think better of it - that is until we watched another pair of traveler’s strap in and zip down together arriving safely at the other end. So in quite an admittedly touristy end to our hike, Steven and I strapped in and zipped down along the zip line to the bottom of the wall.