How to reach the Zhengbeilou tower at the Jiankou Great Wall

[Bryan]

To get to Zhengbeilou coming from Xizhazi (Xizhazi 5 dui), turn right here. It’s a left turn coming from Qianzhazi (Xizhazi 1 dui). The intersection is at 40°28'12.5"N 116°31'43.5"E.


Head down this road until it ends, and you will find the trail by walking in the general direction of the tower, which you can clearly see here. The trail is easy to follow. There are two forks and both times you take the right branch.


If approaching from the south side, go to the Shun Tong hong zun yu yang zhi zhong xin (shùn tōng hóng zūn yú yǎng zhí zhōng xīn, 順通虹尊魚养殖中心, Shun Tong rainbow trout farm center).


Go to the right of this sign and through the parking lot and turn right to get to Zhengbeilou (or left to take the lower path to Jiankou).


Follow this sign to Zhengbeilou. Note that the path is steep and requires some rock climbing. The approach from the north (Xizhazi) is much easier.

[Bryan]

This Google Earth screen shot shows the path from Xizhazi to the Sharp North Tower (Zhengbeilou).
The blue line is the GPS track and the red line is the Great Wall.
Note that the Google Earth image is placed slightly too far to the north and so doesn't exactly align with my GPS track.

[Kim]

How far can you go by car before you need to walk?

[Bryan]

Originally Posted by Kim

How far can you go by car before you need to walk?

To about 40°27'57.71"N 116°31'51.56"E.

[Kim]

Seems that has to go on the list of places to go

[Bryan]

Jiankou is definitely worth visiting! I will be posting photos and info about Jiuyanlou and the Zhao guest house in Xizhazi village in the near future as well.

[robert_loken]

Originally Posted by Bryan

To get to Zhengbeilou coming from Xizhazi (Xizhazi 5 dui), turn right here. It’s a left turn coming from Qianzhazi (Xizhazi 1 dui). The intersection is at 40°28'12.5"N 116°31'43.5"E.

The signs on the picture above have been dwarfed by a large 'warning' sign as shown in the attachement. The picture is taken from the other side and shows Great Wall walkers Jenny and Gary that I hiked together with to Mutianyu yesterday.

[Kimmo]

Originally Posted by robert_loken

The signs on the picture above have been dwarfed by a large 'warning' sign as shown in the attachement. The picture is taken from the other side and shows Great Wall walkers Jenny and Gary that I hiked together with to Mutianyu yesterday.

Hi Robert,

Thanks for the update. We're planning to visit this area next weekend and would have most likely walked pass this intersection due to the new signs.

Awesome blog by the way (and the pictures are great, too!). I've been reading it for past couple of days and noticed that you just went trough the Mutianyu section. I wish you a safe and memorable journey!

[robert_loken]

Hi Kimmo,

My pleasure. I wish you a really good trip - it was a great stretch
Glad to hear that you like the blog too.

Be safe

Robert

[SteveW]

I did Zhengbeilou to Mutianyu this past week. Thanks to everyone on this forum for the helpful information. There is one bit that needs correcting:

Originally Posted by Bryan

Head down this road until it ends, and you will find the trail by walking in the general direction of the tower, which you can clearly see here. The trail is easy to follow. There are two forks and both times you take the right branch.

I saw three forks, and took the left fork the first two times (as per this map: Jiankou maps (the first one) ). The third one may or may not have been a real fork - it seems you're already up on a saddle point of a side ridge by that point; I took the right one as instructed by some Chinese photographers I had run into and reached Zhengbeilou no problem.

Extra information that might be helpful to others attempting this trip:

916 bus to Huairou from Dongzhimen station has two versions - the express (kuaide) and local. Earliest local bus leaves at 4:55 (!), while the earliest express leaves at 6. I couldn't figure out how to visually distinguish between the two; just ask the driver. I think both are very frequent; I took the 6am express for Y12 and arrived at Huairou at 7:15. After a pit stop and some fruit buying I attempted to get a taxi to Xizhazi. The first one I talked to (an actual taxi) tried entering Xizhazi in his GPS but couldn't find it; I ended up with a van driver who clearly specialized in making wall runs for an agreed price of Y100 (I didn't bargain very hard - he had seen me with the clueless taxi driver). Reached Xizhazi 2 around 8:20 after paying Y20 at the gate and easily recognizing the turnoff based on this photo:
How to reach the Zhengbeilou tower at the Jiankou Great Wall

It's not entirely obvious where the trail starts (locals sort of pointed me in the right general direction... after warning that the trail was muddy) but just follow your instincts as you wander by some corn fields and it becomes apparent that you're on the right path after a few minutes - there will be a sign. The path is well-trodden but the forest grows so fast that you'll be brushing up against a lot of plants if you go in summer. It was relatively cool but humid so there was a huge amount of dew - my legs were quite wet. Thankfully I had brought long pants (helpful to protect both against the shrubs and also the biting flies).

I got up to Zhengbeilou shortly after 9, I think. I had seen a hint of sun on the bus trip but Jiankou is high enough up that it's shrouded in a fair bit of mist whenever Beijing has any clouds, it seems - looking west from the tower you could see that the clouds were rolling in from the south and being partially blocked by the ridge. Several photography buffs were camped out on the tower waiting for the perfect cloud/wall moments (or maybe waiting for the clouds to burn off, but it wasn't going to be particularly hot that day so I don't think that ever happened), but my camera isn't great and couldn't power through the light mist very well so I took off pretty quickly. The walk down from the ox-horn was a bit tricky since it's steep and smooth and was a bit wet, but that was the only part that was particularly difficult. I was surprised that I reached the restored section before noon (seeing nobody until the western-most Mutianyu water vendor, who told me that there hadn't even been anyone coming from his east yet), so I ended up hiking all of Mutianyu for a few hours and sharing a van back to Huairou (Y20 per person; he had three passengers already - I was the fourth and didn't try to bargain on price, but rather on time, getting him to leave even though he seemingly wanted to wait to fill his van).

Anyhow, this was my first time on the wall and it was great fun and went incredibly smoothly. Thanks again to all the posters here!