Hike! 2010 Thru-hike attempt

[windbo2008]

My boyfriend and I are planning to attempt a hike of the Ming Great Wall in 2010. We met while thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in 2008, so we have experience with long-distance hiking-- but obviously this will be completely different!

We are currently living in Taiwan and studying Mandarin-- we hope to begin hiking sometime in March. We have been reading all the available books/blogs of those who have walked the wall, and that has been amazingly helpful. Now we're trying to get everything organized, and, of course, we have tons of questions. I'll try not to bombard the forum with them all right now (I'm still working my way through online journals, books, and this forum to answer as many questions as possible). But a couple questions I have not, so far, found answers for:

Would it be a good idea to have an invitation letter from the China Great Wall Society (would that make getting our visas easier)? If so, would they be willing to do that? Does anyone know who I could get in contact with?

And, this one is a bit random, but I am having a hard time finding information about water treatment along the Wall-- on the PCT I had a filter, and chemicals for backup-- anyone who has spent time on the wall, what did you use, what would you recommend?

I'm sure I'll have more questions, but for now any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance

Alexa Williams

[chinoook]

Hi Alexa,

in fact you will find tons of information here on the forum and there are people who have walked at least long sections of the Great Wall. You should get all the answers you have and will have.

Two good answers you gave yourself: You have sufficient fitness for the walk and you are currently learning Chinese! All other problems are quite easy to solve.

Originally Posted by windbo2008

Would it be a good idea to have an invitation letter from the China Great Wall Society (would that make getting our visas easier)? If so, would they be willing to do that? Does anyone know who I could get in contact with?

In my opinion such a letter is of _no_ help at all. Robert L/oken, who is currently doing a thru-hike of the Great Wall has such a letter but so far he did not have any possibility to use it. I myself did not carry and did never have a need of such a thing (I did a half thru-hike in 2007 and continued on different Great Wall sections in 2008/2009, all summing up to about 2100km along the Great Wall).

And, this one is a bit random, but I am having a hard time finding information about water treatment along the Wall-- on the PCT I had a filter, and chemicals for backup-- anyone who has spent time on the wall, what did you use, what would you recommend?

I did neither carry a filter nor chemicals. I just bought bottled water wherever possible (and very often ice tea). I asked people for boiled water or I even drank well water. I did never encounter any problem with the water I got.

Some questions you might already have answered:

- Do you have good maps? At many sections it will be _very_ difficult to find the Great Wall at all if you are not well prepared and use the best affordable maps

- What are your solutions for the summer month? You will probably be in desert sections at the time of the highest temperatures (up to 40 Centigrades and even more without shelter and shade). Some people did take a long time off the Great Wall at the peak of summer heat.

- How will you organize replenish with material (shoes can break, a mattress might leak, a tent can be torn apart, things could get lost, ...). Robert has a very comfortable approach, he has a huge "magic bag" he deposits in one of the major cities along the Great Wall and visits the deposit whenever he needs things from it or if he is going for some comfortable days. Keep in mind that you will need desert/summer equippment as well as winter equippment for _very_ cold times.


-chinoook

[Bryan]

Hi Alexa,

I'm really excited for you two. It's going to be a great experience. I wish you the best of luck.

You said you have selected Jiayuguan for your starting point and will later select your end point. Most people through-hike to Shanhaiguan, the end of the "main line" of the Great Wall. The actual end is at Dandong, but that is much further and you will find in Liaoning many very long stretches where there is no Wall at all. In fact, it's more accurate to say you won't find many long stretches of Great Wall in Liaoning at all. Robert Loken is planning to hike all the way to Dandong. Others have done so but we don't have any evidence of how complete of a hike they really did. And I'm sure you've found that the Ming wall has many branches, loops, and layers. It would not be possible to hike all of them.

I'm glad you decided to take your time. That is an excellent plan. After all, you're doing this hike for your own enjoyment.

Your trail journal for the Pacific Crest Trail hike was really interesting and I suggest you consider providing that link here. I hope you're going to maintain a trail journal for your Great Wall hike too.

I agree with chinoook that you won't need any water purification chemicals or equipment. I have carried chlorine dioxide tabets before but never needed them. However, I have never done any really long hikes on the Great Wall.

Feel free to keep your questions coming.

[Kim]

Sounds like a very interesting plan and I wish you both the best of luck.

In my experience you will be able to buy bottled water in most of the smaller villages you will pass so that will probably be a better choice.

To follow the Ming wall you will have to go trough Liaoning to the North Korean border, but I agree with Bryan and you will probably end up spending more time on some dirt road than on the wall.

[Walker]

Hey everyone!

My name is Turner (aka Turbo on the PCT). I'm the other half of the Windbo-Turbreaker team that finished the PCT in 2008 and plans on hiking the Ming great wall in two months.

Here's the link for the PCT hike:
http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=161828

Here's the link for the Great Wall hike:
http://www.trailjournals.com/greatwall

We're really starting to get excited/nervous. I've only ever been to China briefly once and the Taiwanese I ask about the place aren't exactly thrilled by it. From what I hear about the beginning part of the trail, the peoples Mandarin is heavily accented and very hard to understand. Did anyone encounter the same thing?

[chinoook]

Originally Posted by Walker

We're really starting to get excited/nervous. I've only ever been to China briefly once and the Taiwanese I ask about the place aren't exactly thrilled by it. From what I hear about the beginning part of the trail, the peoples Mandarin is heavily accented and very hard to understand. Did anyone encounter the same thing?

Not at all. You start in Gansu where the people speak Beijing style Mandarin. Of course there are always some people who are hard to understand but you will ever find someone who speaks Putonghua.

It will get worth in Shaanxi and Shanxi but you proceed step by step and you will get used to. I never had any problem concerning accents.


-chinoook

[windbo2008]

Thanks so much for the quick replies!

--chinoook--
You are a wealth of information-- it's so good to know that both the water-treatment, and the lack of an invitation letter shouldn't be an issue (that's a load off). Maps are another of our main difficulties-- we've been trying to find good maps and have been having a hard time (I've probably just not been looking in the right places). What maps did you use and how well did they work for you?

For the heat of the summer we may also just take some time off. We'll be prepared for the heat but our attitude is that if it gets too hot to hike we'll go do something else during that time.

--Bryan & Kim--
That's exactly what we're waffling about-- whether to end at Shanhaiguan or Dandong (it definitely sounds like Liaoning isn't great-- and we're not big on road-walking...). Yes, we're definitely not going to attempt to hike every piece of the Ming Wall-- we basically want to do a continuous hike, including as much of the Wall as possible.

Thanks again everyone!
(More questions to come soon, I'm sure )

[Kim]

Maps are another of our main difficulties-- we've been trying to find good maps and have been having a hard time (I've probably just not been looking in the right places). What maps did you use and how well did they work for you?

You will not find anything better than the Google Earth Map of this forum. That will be very useful to plan your hike and by using this map you will always be able to find the wall during the hike.

Great Wall Map Version 5

[chinoook]

Originally Posted by windbo2008

--chinoook--
You are a wealth of information-- it's so good to know that both the water-treatment, and the lack of an invitation letter shouldn't be an issue (that's a load off). Maps are another of our main difficulties-- we've been trying to find good maps and have been having a hard time (I've probably just not been looking in the right places). What maps did you use and how well did they work for you?

As about always the answer depends on which sections we are talking about. Kim gave the best possible answer in general, the forum's map is _by far_ the best ressource for finding the GW.

In some sections (mainly in the western sections) we do not have high resolution imagery from GE and therefore the best bet is to take the tracks from good topographic maps. The accuracy is excellent, to my experiences you would never be wrong by more than 500m, which means, you can always see the GW in the landscape by following this.

My workings set is the following:

- The best available Chinese province maps. You will need them for Chinese location names and for roads. They unfortunately do not contain _any_ topographic information (heigth, steepness of terrain, water places, ...). Be aware that these maps can only be bought in good bookstores in bigger cities. I doubt you can buy them somewhere along the Great Wall besides Beijing. In Beijing there are at least three bookshops who have these maps in stock, all in Wangfujing or close (Wangfujing Book Store, Foreign Language Book Store, Xidan Book Store).

- The best available topographic map. There are some around, I use the Russian Military Maps. Some notes: The Chinese names are written cyrillic. It was never a problem for me but might be different for others. You need some maps software (I use TTQV) to work with the maps and I print the tiles I need on plain paper. A set of roughly 10 sheets (printed both sides) should do the work for the whole GW. Of course I carry a backup set with me. The scale is 1:500.000 but both reliability and accuracy do a good job for me.
There are different other topographic maps around, for example Army Map Service (AMS) Topographic Maps of China, I have no experience with them. Others (Nathan Gray for example) used British arial maps, I have not seen those yet.

- The GW tracks from the forum's map on my GPS unit (I use a Garmin Vista Cx, others do the same job). This is the clue for you dont have to do any navigation but to follow the device.

Maybe my working set would wor for you as well. If needed I can offer my help for both building GPS tracks (Garmin) from our forum's map for you or even print the RMMs for you.


-chinoook

[Davidchen]

Hi windbo2008: Maybe it is a useful link for your trip, this link to China Great Wall Assocation,and hope you get more inforation from it.http://www.chinagreatwall.org/detail...t_id=greatwall