Jiankou Cliffs is the steepest, most vertiginous, most dangerous section of the entire Great Wall of China. But would we at Walking the Wall let a few sheer hundred-metre dropoffs stop us?

Well, yeah.

But let’s back up a few steps. We set out the morning after we hiked the Beijing Knot with every intention of conquering, besting – in fact, utterly humiliating – the Jiankou Great Wall. We’d heard some dark rumours that it was “not possible” to get over the cliffs, but we treated these rumours like most advice we receive that contradicts whatever we hope for and scoffed at them. Besides, the hikers we spoke with who seemed most knowledgeable about the area – mostly experienced Chinese hikers from Beijing – all assured us that it could be done, though it would be very difficult with packs, they said.

Emma (the blue and orange dot toward the top) making her way around one of the “easy” bits

We did progress quite nicely for a while. Emma faced down her fear of heights and scrambled up some crumbly slopes. I managed to swing my stubby legs over stairsteps designed for giants (with child-sized boots).

What, me worry?

Where’s the escalator?

And so we made our way forward, slowly but determined to have a go. That is, until we reached this:

The steep part is where it turns to the right

At the turn shown above, the unbelievably steep staircases gave way to rocks cemented together in a nearly vertical wall that was impossible to ascend without the use of all four limbs. Now, we have a sort of safety rule pertaining to cliffs, boulders and other obstacles of the vertical persuasion: if we have to use our hands for much more than stabilisation or the odd short scramble, we turn around. In other words, no rock climbing.

And just where is that rule written?

As you can see, I did bend our rule a bit – without pack – to see if there was any way we could manage what was ahead. Though I got past the scary climbing section and beyond – enough to ascertain that it is definitely possible to go all the way to the next section, Mutianyu – it was also pretty apparent that to climb the Jiankou cliffs wearing 20-kilogram packs would be to take on a bit more risk than we care to. In the end we headed back to the valley, taking a five kilometre detour to rejoin the wall, a few hundred metres further than where we left it and well beyond the cliffs.

The view as we walked back toward the Beijing Knot, tails between legs

When we finally hit the Beijing wall, it was like walking into a Great Wall calendar. Behind us, to the west, lay the outer wall; to the south, the Huanghuacheng inner wall; and ahead of us, reclining majestically on the ridgetop, the Beijing wall. The three of them meet at a place called the Beijing Knot, high atop the needle-sharp Huoshi Mountain, and it was that view that we were treated to as we set up camp near the Nine Window Watchtower.

The Beijing Knot is on the peak to the right

Many of the towers and entrances are overgrown with trees and shrubs

And in some parts, even the wall

The Beijing Knot, or Beijing Jie in Chinese, marks the western boundary of the horseshoe-shaped wall that loops around the north of Beijing.

Making our way towards the Knot, visible in the distance

It is this wall that most tourists visit when they come to China, and it is here that you will find the classic “wall” images – stone, brick, watchtowers, windows, crenellations. For thousands of kilometres we had seen hints of these here and there, but Beijing is where they all come together.

The view through one of the windows in the Nine Window Watchtower

Stones form the base of the wall and the towers while the top is made of brick

A horsewalk is where the wall is wide enough for at least two horses at a time

Brick crenellations going up a sloping wall

This was probably one of our favourite days on the wall. Though far from our first day in Beijing municipality, the “mini-province” that encloses Beijing, this was our first day in what you would call “recognisable” Beijing wall. It was exciting to finally see, after nearly a year, the wall that we had envisioned when we thought of this journey.

The holes at the top were used to send arrows or rocks at the enemy

There we were, walking along wall wide enough for two horses, enclosed on both sides, beautifully decorated arrow loops and rock holes still intact, and we couldn’t go two paces without stopping to take a photo.

Brick wall with a watchtower in the distance

For millions of people around the world, Badaling is the Great Wall of China. With its blockish watchtowers, uniform crenellations, and smooth brick and stonework, the Badaling wall looks like a Great Wall should – an endless, horizontal (and sometimes vertical) castle, twisting along knife-edge ridges and climbing dangerous peaks. It’s no wonder the place has become – and has been intentionally cultivated as – a symbol not just of the Great Wall but also China generally.

Now that’s what I call a Great Wall!

Ironically, though, Badaling was not directly on our route; we had to take a side trip to see it. Not far from the Yellow River, several hundred kilometres west of Beijing, the wall splits into inner and outer sections, which rejoin just outside of Beijing. When planning our trip, we decided to hike along the outer wall, as there are fewer long gaps over the route as a whole. Badaling is located on the inner wall, a significant detour from our path.

What we didn’t plan so well was the date of our visit. Bright and early on May Day, one of the biggest holidays of the year in China and maybe the busiest possible time to go to Badaling, we hopped into a cab and made our way to China’s Number 1 tourist destination.

The holiday bottleneck at the entrance to the Badaling wall

As such an important and symbolic site, Badaling comes in for its fair share of criticism, maybe even more than its fair share. First on the list of complaints are the crowds, which are legendary, and we can testify that this particular legend of the Great Wall is solidly grounded in fact. It took our cab driver a good 45 minutes to drive the several hundred metres from the entry gate to our hotel, and once we’d checked in and dropped our bags, we made our way to the wall and were swept into a human river so mighty our only choices were to go with the flow or drown.

Come on in, the water’s fine!

A second complaint, especially among Westerners, is excessive commercialisation; and there’s definitely no lack of money-makers – legitimate and less so – to be found at Badaling. You can buy Great Wall caps, T-shirts and certificates of achievement, not to mention countless baubles and trinkets that have nothing to do with the Great Wall, or even China. You can ride camels, horses and cable cars. You can go to restaurants where there are no prices on the English menu and the staff apparently feels free to randomly make up prices for customers who can’t read Chinese menus (or at least look like they can’t – after being absurdly overcharged for our lunch, we complained to management and pointed out that we’d been charged 30% more than the prices on the Chinese menu – we got our refunds but obviously the scam works most of the time).

Get one for every member of the family!

We thought we deserved a ride up

Giddyup!

Despite all this, we really had a good time at Badaling, and it looked to us like most of the other people there were having fun as well. The wall, which has been totally reconstructed, seemed more Disneyfied than necessary to us, but as for the crowds and commercialisation, it struck us as inevitable that there would be at least one site on the wall given over to mass tourism and the almighty RMB. Given its proximity to Beijing, that place was probably always going to be Badaling (we are less sanguine about some of the changes happening at less touristed spots near Beijing).

Not a bad spot to impress your honey

It also seemed to us that it really is possible to get a sense of the wall from a visit to Badaling. By about 4 o’clock, once the giant tour groups had boarded their buses and headed back to Beijing, stretches of the wall were surprisingly peaceful. Sure, the bricks weren’t original, the pavement was too smooth, and the handrails weren’t quite what we were used to. But the spring green was as fresh as it would have been 500 years ago, the afternoon sun threw lovely shadows across the pavement, and when we squinted and looked out to the west, we swear we saw a group of Mongol horsemen in the distance.

Badaling spring

You can always count on us for the obvious shot

Even Badaling has its quiet moments

(We are still married.)

. . . spring is here!!!

The northern China weather teased us with hints of spring for nearly three months. In early February, the temperatures rose, the rivers thawed, and some desert shrubs blossomed; then in early March a cold snap hit and we had two weeks of snow and sub-zero temperatures. In late March we had another thaw; early April brought freezing 50 kilometre per hour winds and more snow.

But in the last week of April, we descended from the high mountains around Zhangjiakou and walked down into spring. This time, it was here to stay.

Blossoms covering the hillside

After weeks of sporadically fertilising and plowing their fields, suddenly people were in the fields from sunup to sundown, planting corn and potatoes in the uplands and garden vegetables at lower elevations.

Like many farm couples, Mr Zhuang and his wife work the fields together

But only the husband gets to do the fun part

Mr Zhuang’s harrow is made of twigs wrapped around larger twigs

With the weather warming up, people were also outside just for the fun of it, cutting blossoms, riding bikes, eating, drinking and gossiping.

This girl gave each of us a beautiful sprig of cherry blossoms before riding off without giving her name

Tree-lined streets, even in the countryside

If you can call it fun, some people were out walking the wall.

Over the whole of its route in western Hebei, from the Shanxi border in the west to the border with Beijing municipality in the east, the northern branch of Great Wall is made of stone.

In some places, especially near important passes like Zhangjiakou, the stone wall can be an impressive barrier, five or six metres tall with mortar still intact.

Stone wall plunging into a canyon; the city of Zhangjiakou is visible in the distance

The Great Wall’s famous “Da hao he shan” gate is also the north entrance to Zhangjiakou

The section of wall just outside Zhangjiakou has been developed as a public park

But for the most part western Hebei’s stone walls are piles of rubble no more than three to four metres high. We suspect that this may always have been the case, at least in remote places, though we certainly don’t know that for fact.

It seemed to us that the mountain country of western Hebei was plenty high and rough on its own without wall, and that invasions via the peaks weren’t terribly likely anyway. A stone barrier designed more to slow progress rather than halt it entirely may well have been enough in this region. It was certainly enough to slow our progress.

Does this look like a good place to invade China?

Emma picking her way through the rocks on a steep descent

Despite the rough footing, the stone walls of western Hebei were among our favourite stretches of wall to date. The wall certainly stood out from the otherwise smooth and mostly open hills, but because the stones were quarried locally, it also fit into its surroundings nicely and changed form and colour as the local geology changed.

These pink stones were some of the prettiest we saw

The birches on the north side of the wall offered some nice, sheltered campsites