A mountain stream flowing freely after three-plus months locked in ice
From December through February, we were the happy beneficiaries of one of the warmest winters in northern China’s history. We didn’t record a temperature below -20° Celsius all winter long (okay, that may sound cold to Australian ears, but for the people who live here it’s just a slightly nippy evening). By mid-February it wasn’t uncommon for the temperature to rise above 10° on sunny days. A few desert shrubs showed early blossoms, the buds on the trees were close to bursting, and on the warmest days we hiked in mid-weight woolen sweaters with no jacket at all. We really thought spring was here (see Spring Sprungeth).
But we were getting ahead of ourselves.
In the first week of March, a cold snap hit northern China. Our overnight lows dropped back into the -15° range. Daytime highs were 0° or lower, with wind chills around -10 to -13°. And as you can see, it snowed – according to some reports, the biggest March snowstorm in more than 50 years.
A beacon tower on the Shanxi-Inner Mongolia border east of the Yellow River
After having endured three months of winter already, we weren’t entirely happy with this development. We thought we might get leaves opening and some trailside greenery by mid-March, about two weeks earlier than normal. We were fantasizing about taking our boots off at breaks, and sitting outside the tent in the evenings to drink a cup of tea like we did in summer. We’d even sent for our spring gear to arrive around March 10, rather than toward the end of the month as we’d originally planned. None of that worked out, obviously, but once the snowstorm cleared, we did get in some of the prettiest winter hiking of the trip.
Emma with her ski goggles on for the first time in weeks
Shanxi mountain high
The snow may delay clearing the fields and spring plowing by two weeks
The cold snap finally broke around the middle of the month, and we were treated to sunny skies and comparatively warm (5-12°) temperatures for the following week. The only downside was the melt – when it comes to the change from winter to spring along the wall, the cure seems almost worse than the disease.
Brendan plodding along the wall
While it’s not necessarily that much fun to trudge through ankle to knee deep snow, the fluffy stuff is a lot nicer than its slicker sibling: ice. When the snow was cold and dry, our boots were also cold . . . and dry. Walking through the melting snow meant that our boots got soaked through and through every afternoon, and then at night, when the temperature dropped to -5 to -10°, they froze into shapes that weren’t exactly what the podiatrist ordered.
Emma’s left boot at 7 am – she couldn’t get either boot on unless we put a bottle of freshly boiled water under the tongue to soften the leather
The footing got a bit tricky too. Paths that we normally wouldn’t break a sweat on in dry weather turned to icy chutes when snow that had partially melted in the afternoon sun froze overnight.
It may not look like much, but a wrong step on a path like this can send you airborne
And when the white stuff finally melted away, it was replaced by gloppy, heavy, messy mud. At least taking a spill was more fun than it was on the ice.
Not bad form for a beginner at mud skiing . . .
. . . but he’s not quite ready for the black double-diamonds
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