Walking the Wall

The other day my mum asked us why we don’t post stories about our daily routine with photos of us doing everyday stuff. Here’s why . . .

Walnut-soybean-oatmeal porridge, mmmm

That’ll teach her to ask questions.

We have been aware that we neglect the day-to-day a bit. Some of this is because a lot of our daily routine is less than photogenic – if you think the picture of Brendan eating breakfast is scary, you should see him before he’s properly woken up. And some of it is that, to us at least, our day-to-day experience is, well, day-to-day.

Except that sometimes we can’t make breakfast when it’s -15C at 7 am because someone forgot to oil the pump cup and the stove won’t light, or we can’t brush our teeth because the toothpaste is frozen, or I have to remind Brendan not to step off the cliff next to our tent when he goes out for some fresh air and starlight at 2 am . . .

Okay, so maybe our everyday routine’s not quite that boring, but when you live it for months on end, even a once-in-a-lifetime adventure can occasionally seem like a daily grind.

Walking through the first snow of January

The overwhelming fact of our life right now is that it’s cold. Not actually as cold as we’d expected – in fact, on sunny days when there’s not much wind, which is most days, the temperature’s usually about 0 to 3 degrees Celsius and the hiking is downright pleasant.

Mornings and evenings are another story. Once the sun goes down the temperature usually drops to -10 pretty quickly. For the most part we can stay comfortably warm in those temperatures by rugging up and burrowing into our sleeping bags, but the cold does present a few challenges when we’re doing camp chores.

Ice crystals form on the inside of the tent and fall on our bags overnight

The most significant challenge is water. After the first morning of waking up to rock-hard water bags that didn’t thaw during the day, we experimented with a) sleeping with our water bags b) putting them in our backpacks overnight c) keeping them in the tent wrapped up in clothes overnight d) boiling the water before going to bed and e) pouring water in the pot before going to sleep and heating it up in the morning. “E” won out.

Winter also means the rivers are frozen, which is great for crossing but not so great for collecting water in the absence of a village. Occasionally there are holes dug in the ice for the sheep to drink from, but rather than elbow our way through a herd of dirty, thirsty sheep, last week we chose to scrape the snow off a frozen river to boil for drinking water – that is, after first scraping the film of dirt off the top of the snow.

But aside from a few alterations, winter has brought very few changes to our regular schedule – in some ways, the cold is easier to deal with than the 40+ temperatures of summer.

First task of the morning, boiling the water

Second task, washing up

As soon as we’re packed, we’re off

Due to our rehabilitation schedule, mornings are not as rushed as they used to be. We are still limiting the number of kilometres we walk each day to around 20, which means we tend to leave camp around 10 am in order to reach our next campsite close to sunset. We do this mainly for safety reasons – though camping out here in rural China is probably safer than camping in most parts of Australia, we still don’t want to expose ourselves if we don’t have to, so we usually wait until all wanderers and shepherds have gone home before setting up our tent.

Once we have settled down for the evening, I use the satellite phone to send our GPS coordinates back to Australia. This is part of our emergency protocol - if we haven’t been heard from for more than 36 hours, having our last coordinates at hand will be a huge advantage for anyone wanting to track us down.

Evening task, send coordinates

At the moment we’re walking seven hours a day, 50 minutes on followed by a 10-15 break. It’s sort of like a job where you have a fantastic corner office with an amazing view. The only thing is, your corner office suite is on the 100th floor and there’s no lift. So, you begin the day by walking all the way up the fire escape stairs, and when you get there, you have some water and a snack, then go back down and walk all the way up again. And do that all day. Every day for a week. Then go to town on the weekend and order a banquet of Chinese food.

The good news is we have covered around 1600 kilometres and are approaching the half-way mark. The bad news is we have now hit the canyons and hills of Shaanxi, which are merely a taste of the hills and mountains to come. But don’t throw a pity party for us just yet – the weather has been clear, the mountains very beautiful, and we’ve just mailed back a bag of unnecessary belongings, so our backpacks are each a whopping one kilogram lighter.

Setting off into the Shaanxi hills