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Published: October 14th 2010
This weekend the larger part of my group went to hike the Great Wall. It was a two hour bus ride to reach the wall and the weather wasn't so great, lots of smog but it was definitely good to be out of the city. The part of the wall we went to is called Jin Shan Ling which is means Golden Mountain Fort but in the past the wall was actually known as the Sand Hills Fort. The name was changed when it was restored in the 60's to attract more tourists.
We climbed to the wall on an old stone path which while not the steepest hike of the day might have been the longest ascent of the day. As soon as we reached the top of the wall a group of locals started trying to sell us Great Wall t-shirts so I can say that the first thing I did on the wall was bargain a salesman down for a t-shirt.
When we started the climb along the wall itself Ge Wei (David Giar) and I lead the way as neither of us like crowds. The first section of the wall was unrestored and had only
a few people on it. This section was also harder to climb then the later restored section. The restored section was fairly crowded with a lot of foreigners. The wall is very nice looking there but I prefer the sections with fewer people. There was a second unrestored section after the restored portion but it was not especially long.
The Great Wall is not continuous due to the long, chaotic period under which it was constructed and the time in which large parts of it have been left unmaintained. This means that it was pretty apparent where to start and finish the hike. Once we reached the military forbidden zone we turned back to the restored section where we got off on the Mongolian side.
That night we had dinner at a nearby restaurant and a bonfire at which we played the Chinese version of duck duck goose. We then headed up to the wall to camp. Many people slept in tents but a slept out under the smog. The morning was also very smoggy so we weren't able to watch the sunrise but we still did yoga on the wall before returning to campus.
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Climb to the wall
