Climbing in Yangshou

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For a hot second I thought I was moving to Vietnam for the summer. I received an email from a guiding company located on the island of Cat Ba Island in Ha Long Bay asking if I was avalible to work for them for the summer; I was stoked, super stoked but in the end it didn't work out and they didn't get the project I was going to work on....oh well; maybe next year. So where did I want to go next, back to Yangshou and climb the limestone karsts I saw only a few days before. It's slow season here which means it's hot and wet; Rich, John, or Brad- if you thought Thailand was hot come here and you will know otherwise. Beyond the heat and humidity, which I am attempting to force myself to get used to; the area is nice. Because it's low season the amount of climbers is low but I've been able to go climbing 4 or 5 days so far. The good thing about the small community is that I've been able to go with a mixture of locals and foriegners. For about a week I was going with a core group, Andrew from Colorado; Haaken and Jorgen from Norway; and Ton Ton, a local. Here and there others would hop on to join us and we've spent some really enjoyable days at the crag.

Yangshou is a tourist town but the most crags are located out in the countryside with very few tourists. In some cases the only other people in sight are farmers tending to their crops. I'm planning on spending a week or so more here then heading into the Yunnan province to hike Tiger Leaping Gorge. After that it will be on to Hong Kong and the I'm flying to France to stay with my brother and his family for a while. He lives in the French Alps outside Chamonix, I imagine I might like it there and hope to stay a while.

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Photos

The Egg
You can see Andrew climbing to the right of the cave if you look close.

View from Moon Hill
View from the top of Moon Hill. The village below is where I took the first picture of Moon Hill, Entry: China Part 1.

Norwegians
Monkeying around after a hard day of climbing.