Seeborns in Space: The Pretty-Pretty-Pretty Great Wall

S and I went to the Great Wall last weekend. She had a presentation to give in Beijing on Monday, so we decided to work in a visit to the Wall over the weekend, as it's not far from Beijing. Once we decided to go, I started exploring the possible destinations and made plans for the trip, and I let Sierra book my flight in and out of Beijing (hers was already purchased through work). Yeah, more on that later.

After some deep digging on the interwebs, I worked out details to visit a beautiful closed stretch of the Wall. We flew in to Beijing early on Saturday, took the subway to a bus depot, bused for 1.5 hours to a small town, and then had a driver take us an hour farther to a small simple inn. The inn itself is hidden up a winding road just an eighth of a mile below the Great Wall on the back side of the Simatai resort.

The quaint Dongpo Inn. The accommodations were minimal, but the food was great and location even better.

We arrived at about 6pm on Saturday as the owner of the inn rode off on his motorcycle to make sure the guard enforcing the closure of that portion of the Wall had left for the day. When he returned, he showed myself, Sierra, and a handful of French patrons a trail to follow up to the Wall. From there, we climbed tower after tower until we were hiking with a wooded slope to our left and a cliff immediately off the right of the ancient winding structure.

Here's a birds-eye view of the stretch we hiked that evening. We went as far as the highest point on the right side before the Wall begins descending. While the entire stretch shown is currently closed, it is permanently closed beyond that point due to disrepair and lethal terrain. We turned around just in time to make it back to the inn by dark.

Here are a few photos from our evening on the Great Wall at Simatai. A thin fog shrouded the distant peaks and towers.

Pausing and posing on the way to the Wall.

Just warming up. It was very hot and humid, and it didn't take long to saturate my shirt. In fact, I've never seen Sierra sweat as much as she did this weekend, so I wasn't the only one.

This stretch of the Wall is known for the steep rugged terrain, unimproved condition, and remoteness leading to fewer visitors. All of my favorite things. Of course, being closed now really keeps the riff-raff out (except for us, apparently).