Travel and Hiking

Hike on hill trails and Great Wall between Jiankou and Beigou Village, getting a look at Great Wall between Jiankou and Mutianyu and finishing with a scenic walk down into Beigou Village.

We'll start off the hike by following a zigzag hillside trail that rises quickly to a Great Wall tower that is almost 1,000 metres above sea level. From the tower we can see the Jiankou basin, as well as the many other sections of Great Wall in the area.

From there we'll head east, following the wall towards Mutianyu. We'll end up at the northwestern end of the Mutianyu Great Wall and we’ll follow the wall down towards the main park area. On previous visits here we’ve heard the din of all the visitors to Mutianyu off in the distance—surprisingly loud!

We’re going to avoid all that and hike a paved trail down the hillside to Beigou Village, passing through tidy chestnut orchards on our way down to the village square.

Cost: ¥460 / ¥415 for members

See a full description, more photos, and book online at https://www.beijinghikers.com/hike-in-beijing/view/1921/jiankou-great-wall-to-beigou-village-6/

Beijing Hikers—fun and friendly hikes and trips around Beijing and greater China, since 2001.

For more updates on hikes and trips follow our WeChat account BeijingHikers北京爱山 and keep an eye on www.beijinghikers.com

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Visit Fangshan District for a short stroll up to a lookout, a big lunch at a country restaurant, and a 1.5 hour tour underground at Stone Flowers Cave.

Stone Flowers Cave (AKA Shihua Dong) is a karst cave in Fangshan District, in Beijing’s southwest.

It’s a scenic area, which means colourful lighting and good paths for walking on.

The main cave system has seven levels, and goes deep undeground. The top four levels are open, and we’ll visit them all on the full 2.5km underground loop walk, bottoming out on Level 4 at 150m underground.

The top level of the cave is dry; the lower levels have drips and trickles of water, and they say there’s an underground river all the way down on the seventh level. The temperature inside the caves is a constant 13–16°C.

Down in the caves we’ll see a whole lot of speleothems: stalactites, stalagmites, columns, flowstone, ‘stone flowers’, ‘crystal flowers’, shields, rimstone pools, and cave popcorn.

Cost: ¥480 / ¥430 for members / ¥240 for under 18s

See a full description, more photos, and book online at https://www.beijinghikers.com/hike-in-beijing/view/1823/stone-flowers-cave-visit/

Beijing Hikers—fun and friendly hikes and trips around Beijing and greater China, since 2001.

For more updates on hikes and trips follow our WeChat account BeijingHikers北京爱山 and keep an eye on www.beijinghikers.com

https://www.beijinghikers.com / info@beijinghikers.com

An extended version of our regular High Rise hike, adding a walk down a wild valley and two medium-rise hills on the way to the end.

We’ll start the hike with an easy warm up, walking through chestnut orchards on concreted field tracks. As the hills get steeper we’ll reach the end of the orchards and start the ‘high rise’ part of the hike, following a narrow path up a big hill to an almost-800 metre peak. Our starting point is at around 300 metres above sea level, so this is a pretty good climb. Your breathtaking climb will be rewarded with breathtaking views.

On the regular version of the High Rise hike we skirt around the tallest peak in the area. Today we’ll offer the option to go all the way to the top, which we’ll find marked with a trig, and then a little bit farther on to find a pile of stones that is supposed to be the remains of a watchtower. We should arrive at the pile of rocks in time for lunch (and hopefully long views of all the surrounding mountains).

We’ll come down again to find our regular trail, and follow it around the peak to find a track that leads down through terraced chestnut orchards to a small village, a tiny settlement of around 10 houses linked to a larger village by a concrete road.

Instead of heading out to the larger village we’ll follow a little concrete farm track farther up into the hills, crossing over into a long valley.

If we kept hiking all the way down the valley we’d end up at the Lakeside Great Wall. But before we get there we’ll turn off to cross a medium-rise hill, hiking a farm trail through terraced chestnut orchards and then down in to the valley on the other side.

Cost: ¥390 / ¥350 for members

See a full description, more photos, and book online at https://www.beijinghikers.com/hike-in-beijing/view/1718/high-rise-plus/

Beijing Hikers—fun and friendly hikes and trips around Beijing and greater China, since 2001.

For more updates on hikes and trips follow our WeChat account BeijingHikers北京爱山 and keep an eye on www.beijinghikers.com

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New hike! Hike up to Great Wall towers high above the White River for superb views of mountains, the White River canyon, and the Miyun Reservoir.

The Lupiguan ‘Deerskin Pass’ Great Wall was built during the Ming Dynasty to block off a pass in the mountains north of Beijing.

The Great Wall across the floor of the valley – a tall wall, with an arch called a ‘Water Pass’ to let the water through – was demolished to make way for a modern-era bridge over the river. The ruins of the Water Pass are now completely submerged by the Miyun Reservoir.

The large towers atop the ridges on either side of the bridge are still visible, and if you’ve done our White River hike before then it’s likely you will have spotted them high up on the cliffs as we drove past on the way home.

On this hike we’ll explore the east side of the pass, getting a look at the towers and nearby wall and checking out an internet-famous viewpoint of a horseshoe bend in the lower reaches of the White River.

Cost: ¥400 / ¥360 for members

See a full description, more photos, and book online at https://www.beijinghikers.com/hike-in-beijing/view/1953/lupiguan-great-wall-2/

Beijing Hikers—fun and friendly hikes and trips around Beijing and greater China, since 2001.

For more updates on hikes and trips follow our WeChat account BeijingHikers北京爱山 and keep an eye on www.beijinghikers.com

https://www.beijinghikers.com / info@beijinghikers.com

A looping walk over tricky terrain and unrestored 'wild' Great Wall on the west side of Jiankou, peaking at the impressive Nine-Eyes Tower.

On a clear day in this spot in the heart of the mountains it will be possible to see the towers of our Great Wall Spur and Chinese Knot hikes, and the Mutianyu Great Wall, with glimpses of other sections of the Great Wall that follow nearby mountain ridges. When it's really clear, you can see all the way back to the skyscrapers of Beijing's CBD.

After hiking up to Nine-Eyes Tower we’ll take a side trail to get back to the Great Wall on the west side of Jiankou, and hike along it towards the Chinese Knot. We'll finish the walk not far from there, hiking down hill trails to the village car park.

Cost: ¥430 / ¥390 for members

See a full description, more photos, and book online at https://www.beijinghikers.com/hike-in-beijing/view/560/great-wall-nine-eyes-tower-3/

Beijing Hikers—fun and friendly hikes and trips around Beijing and greater China, since 2001.

For more updates on hikes and trips follow our WeChat account BeijingHikers北京爱山 and keep an eye on www.beijinghikers.com

https://www.beijinghikers.com / info@beijinghikers.com

Explore the Panlongshan section of the the Gubeikou Great Wall, starting with a climb up to the 24-Eyes Tower, finishing with a look at some of the Great Wall towers on the west side of the big North Gate, and hiking all the wall in between. Includes a post-hike lunch at a countryside restaurant.

24-Eyes Tower is the highest tower on the Panlongshan ‘Coiling Dragon Mountain’ part of the Great Wall, and was one of the largest, too. The name ’24-Eyes’ came from the number of windows—six on each of the tower’s four sides. The tower only has two sides now due to damage over the years, including explosions and gunfire during a 1930s battle between Chinese and Japanese armies.

From 24-Eyes Tower we’ll hike down the Great Wall, heading for Gubeikou’s North Gate. We’ll be on the wall most of the way there, passing through Haowang Tower and the General’s Tower along the way.

Just after the General’s Tower we’ll take a detour off the wall to head for the North Gate, hiking hill trails to get back to the wall that encircled Gubeikou Village, and then along the wall to the North Gate, an arched gate in the wall.

Includes a post-hike lunch at a countryside restaurant.

Cost: ¥470 / ¥420 for members / ¥240 for kids

See a full description, more photos, and book online at https://www.beijinghikers.com/hike-in-beijing/view/1772/gubeikou-great-wall-3/

Beijing Hikers—fun and friendly hikes and trips around Beijing and greater China, since 2001.

For more updates on hikes and trips follow our WeChat account BeijingHikers北京爱山 and keep an eye on www.beijinghikers.com

https://www.beijinghikers.com / info@beijinghikers.com

Shunyi-area pickup points

Hike over a low ridge to get into wild valleys in the mountains east of the Badaling pass, and then climb up on to a high ridgeline to get a look at an unnamed 1,200m peak.

This hike starts off on an old trail between Sansi and Sisi Villages. The village names mean, roughly, Third Division and Fourth Division, and the soldiers stationed here during the Ming Dynasty were part of Beijing’s defense system against raiders coming down through the Guanting Plain.

We’ll hike out the back of Sansi village, and then head up a valley, aiming for a low pass on the ridge. It’s an easy walk to begin with, and gets steeper near the pass.

We then head down into the valleys on the other side. These valleys are a long way from any other villages, and it appears they’re no longer actively farmed. That means the trails here are a little overgrown and scratchy.

A rocky track takes us down into the forest, and eventually to a small stream coming out of another valley. If we kept going downstream, we’d end up at Sisi Village.

But that would mean the hike would be too short. Instead, we’re going to turn up into the valley and go higher into the mountains.

We’ll head upstream, following a faint track beside the stream, eventually coming out into a broader, more open part of the valley.

At the top of this valley is an unnamed 1,200m peak, and that toward that peak is where we’re headed.

To get up to the peak we take a turn on to a steep track that gets us up on to a high ridgeline, and from this point the views on the hike really open up.

A clear trail leads up the ridgeline, twisting around crags on the way towards the peak. As we come closer to the peak, we get views towards Changping and the Ming Tombs. If the weather is clear, the Ming Tombs Reservoir and the Tianchi Reservoir can be seen off in the distance, as well as the Great Wall in the Longquanyu and Huanghuacheng area.

We’ll skirt around the very top of the mountain, going through forest a few tens of metres below the actual peak, and then down the ridge on the other side. From this ridgeline the views are to the northeast, with the Guanting Plain and reservoir off in the distance.

Cost: ¥400 / ¥360 for members

See a full description, more photos, and book online at https://www.beijinghikers.com/hike-in-beijing/view/1799/sansi-tops-hike/

Beijing Hikers—fun and friendly hikes and trips around Beijing and greater China, since 2001.

For more updates on hikes and trips follow our WeChat account BeijingHikers北京爱山 and keep an eye on www.beijinghikers.com

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Follow the western end of the repaired Great Wall at Badaling up and over a big mountain or two to finish on the ‘wild’ section east of Stone Valley Village.

Way back at the end of the Ming Dynasty, Li Zicheng, the ‘Dashing King’ and leader of a peasant rebellion, broke through the Great Wall at an obscure pass in the mountains just west of the Badaling Great Wall. He went on through the mountains with his army to Beijing, besieged it, and proclaimed himself Emperor of the new Shun Dynasty.

The pass where the Peasant King broke through is still obscure, reached by doing a U-turn out of one of those long tunnels that go under the mountains and then driving up to the end of a narrow road.

It’s now known as the Badaling Ancient Great Wall, and it has all been repaired and fixed up.

But most visitors here just take a look at the lower two towers and head back, as the Great Wall here gets rather steep.

What we’ll do for this hike is keep going up, and up, and then over and down, then up and over another hill … all the way to Stone Valley Village.

Cost: ¥450 / ¥405 for members

See a full description, more photos, and book online at https://www.beijinghikers.com/hike-in-beijing/view/1590/badaling-ancient-great-wall/

Beijing Hikers—fun and friendly hikes and trips around Beijing and greater China, since 2001.

For more updates on hikes and trips follow our WeChat account BeijingHikers北京爱山 and keep an eye on www.beijinghikers.com

https://www.beijinghikers.com / info@beijinghikers.com

The hills to the west of Beijing city are full of trails and tracks that are great for a long day of rambling about.

We’ve planned this one as a springtime special, picking a route that will take us by flowers and blooming blossoms.

The hike follows the first 5km of our regular West Hills route, starting off near the Beijing Botanical Gardens.

We take a few different turns in the middle to check out some of the special spots in the hills before coming back around to the picturesque Machang Reservor, and finish up by hiking out near Badachu.

As well as the blossoms, we’ll see traces of abandoned villages and remnants of ancient temples and pilgrim’s trails.

Cost: ¥390 / ¥350 for members

See a full description, more photos, and book online at https://www.beijinghikers.com/hike-in-beijing/view/1976/west-hills-blossoms-route/

Beijing Hikers—fun and friendly hikes and trips around Beijing and greater China, since 2001.

For more updates on hikes and trips follow our WeChat account BeijingHikers北京爱山 and keep an eye on www.beijinghikers.com

https://www.beijinghikers.com / info@beijinghikers.com

A moderately difficult hike that follows a line of wild wall up to a tall tower with 360° views of mountains, valleys, small villages, and a long line of wall heading high into the hills. Some sections extremely tricky underfoot.

We start the hike not far past Chenjiapu Village, taking a short walk up a concrete road before turning off on to a dirt track that leads up a valley towards the Great Wall.

The valley is narrow to begin with, and slowly opens up to give views of Great Wall and towers on a high ridgeline.

At the top of the valley we’ll find the Great Wall, with two mostly-intact towers sited to guard a pass at a dip in the mountains.

We’ll be headed north from the dip, following a rough line of ‘wild’ Great Wall through the two towers and up to the local “General’s Tower”.

We’ll continue down the wall, taking a few detours around broken sections, and hike along the flatter section of wall above Chenjiapu Village.

The hike takes us by a few more towers on the way, and there’s at least one tricky section where we might find it easier to hike beside the Great Wall instead of on top of it.

Before the wall gets way too steep to walk on we’ll turn off on to a hill trail, and follow it down to the village road to end the hike.

Bring your passport/ID in case we get checked at the border crossing on the way home.

Cost: ¥420 / ¥380 for members

See a full description, more photos, and book online at https://www.beijinghikers.com/hike-in-beijing/view/1918/chenjiapu-great-wall-3/

Beijing Hikers—fun and friendly hikes and trips around Beijing and greater China, since 2001.

For more updates on hikes and trips follow our WeChat account BeijingHikers北京爱山 and keep an eye on www.beijinghikers.com

https://www.beijinghikers.com / info@beijinghikers.com