Hiking 15 Towers of the Unrestored Great Wall

Saturday morning I woke up at 5 AM to get ready and meet the Beijing Hikers. Every weekend they do a hike of varying levels. This weekend was a level 5 hike, which is supposed to be their hardest level. Although I was worried about the level 5ness of the hike, I had decided that I was mentally prepared for anything that came my way. As for physically, in the past I had been able to take on challenges without preparing for them and somehow I would be in the lead. When I did the several day hikes in the Sinai I was almost always at the front of the group and was helping lead the way even though I had never done sports. So naturally I would assume that I could do it now. Oh how wrong I was.

While on the bus they gave us each a rough drawing of what we were going to do. There were three options.

Option 1: Hike from Tower 1 to Tower 15 and then come down the mountains and come back, making a circle.

Option 2: Hike from Tower 1 to Tower 8 and come down the mountains and loop back.

Option 3: Hike from Tower 1 to Tower 4 and come down the mountains and loop back.

I had decided that I came to do the 15 towers, I was going to do the 15 towers. It's funny how easy it is to think you can do things and then they turn out to be ridiculously harder than you thought.

As soon as we got off the bus we saw our guide, Mr. Mao. Apparently the last time they tried to do this hike some farmers spotted them, climbed up the mountains and told them they had to leave because the Chinese Government does not allow people to go on the unrestored parts of the wall. I guess since we had Mr. Mao (a local farmer) as our guide it was ok? He was awesome. While all of us were decked out in fancy hiking boots (thank you Alex), backpacks (thank you Mamuke) and carrying two liters of water and snacks, this guy was wearing the equivalent of Converse hightops and he had nothing more than a little sickle to cut through the brush. I don't think I ever saw him eat or drink any water the whole time.

We started the hike going right into the hard stuff. Not even ten minutes into it I started to wonder what I got myself into. I took a lot of photos but I think they suffered due to the fact that I was focusing so much on not falling or getting hurt and keeping up with the group. The hike was set up so that there was a leader in the front and in the back. The front person would tie red ribbons to trees and then the back person would take the ribbons off. This way the path was marked and people would not get lost. Well, two girls did get lost because the leader didn't put enough red ribbons up and they came to a fork and went the wrong way. Side note, one of the girls was wearing loafers that she bought for boating in Hong Kong. I still don't know how she managed the whole thing.

At what I thought was the 8th tower we stopped for a break and I thought they would make an announcement about Option 2, going down the mountain and back to the village. All I heard was "Well it looks like everyone is going to tower 15!" Apparently they had asked if anyone wanted to earlier but obviously the people in the back who would have wanted to go back had not made it to Tower 8 yet. So we all kept going and it just got harder. It was a lot of up and down and since the wall is all over the place, it was rather difficult at parts. They told us that we would have a rope in parts but I don't think they even brought one.

When we finally got to Tower 15 I was excited but also worried about the way down. Although I have a hard time breathing when going up, going down does a serious number on my knees.

The worst part about going down was that we didn't even have the wall anymore. Mr. Mao was cutting us a path and we were constantly being scratched up by ultra dry bushes and thorns. Luckily it was chilly enough that I was wearing long pants and my windbreaker so the worst of the scratching was on my hands.

After finally completing the hike we got back to the bus and had a bunch of snacks. I am sure you can imagine my joy when I saw they had OREOs!!! Not regular Oreos, but chocolate filled ones.

After all of that I came to a very important realization: I am not 17 anymore.