[h2]Beijing Hike Picturesque[/h2]

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Mid Oct. - Beijing West Hills - Overcast/Sunny/Rain, Snow/Sunny

About 10 am, 19 of us started hiking in this colorful West Hills area. The irregular rocky steps, which got my heart pumping quickly, soon disappeared and we were on a steep, narrow dirt path. Looking back, the many colors of leaves were on display like a big palette. I couldn't see much when looking up except thick woods. After about an hour, we were on the flat range that's called Yellow Grass Range. Much of the grass had turned golden yellow. Quite impressive. Two hours into the hike, 600 meter elevation gain. A short break here.

We then walked on a more or less horizontal path, with a few remaining Great Wall towers in our view. They had trees and weeds growing all over. Who knows how long ago men stepped on them for the last time. Wind started blowing. It was cold. A little drizzle followed, and it soon turned into light snow. It was the first snow this year.

At 1 pm, we had lunch by a Great Wall tower which is not hollow inside the walls. From there we saw a few better preserved towers along a ridge, connected by a fairly low rocky pile. My fellow hikers (all between 20 and 30 years old) enjoyed sharing food among them. I found it interesting.

Snow had stopped. The sky turned even darker after a brief 10 minutes of sunshine. We decided to go down along the Valley of Falling Leaves. The path is buries under leaves and we had to wack the bushes in order to move on.

We finished the 15-km hike at around 4:30 pm. The girls finished in higher spirit than did guys . A two-hour bus ride took us back in town, which looked much more pretty at night, in my opinion.

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