Secret Wall section

Our third section of the wall we did through a place called Leo's Hostel that offers a tour. They call it the Secret Wall tour. There are a few outfits that do the same sort of thing. They take you to an unrestored part of the wall that is not part of any of the tourist sections. This section was about 3 hours away from Beijing past the Badaling Great Wall. We certainly got something different than what we signed up for. We were told you had to be fit to do this tour, that was an under statement.

Audrey making her way along a bad part of the wall

The walking of this part of the wall was supposed to be about 3 hours but ended up being 4hours and 45 minutes. The owner of the hostel decided to take us on a bit of a different route than normal and ended up getting lost himself. This tour was insane and dangerous. We were climbing up cliff sides and having to make our way down steep areas through trees and rocks. There was only about 1 1/2 hours of the whole time that we were even near any part of the wall. It really is an unrestored section. There are parts that you can barely recognize as ever being a wall. Some sections are piles of dilapidated and shifted masonry blocks, other areas have decades of trees and shrubs growing out of it. A lot of the time we couldn't walk on the parts of the wall but hiked along the outside edge of it, clinging onto the steep cliff side.

Chestnuts???

We ventured well away from the wall and down more steep terrain, parts of it got really bad and there were no trees or branches to hang onto. We ended up sliding down on our butts. People were falling and slipping all over the place. We finally came to a flat area and followed a river for a while. Then we had to start crossing the river a few times back and forth to continue onwards. We jumped across slippery rocks. We finally came to a part of the river where there was nowhere to walk along side it anymore. We had to somehow make our way across an area of slanted smooth rock that went at a steep angle into the river. Our shoes had no grip to make our way across, many people were having a difficult time. The hostel owner and a few of his assistants had to get into the water and help hold many of us on the rock as we tried to make our way across. Then we came to an area of rapid rushing water where we had to make our way across to some rocks. Jack wanted me to go ahead of him so he could keep a hold of me to stop me from being flushed down the river. I tried to reach across to the rocks but was not long enough. The guys ended up having me strung on my backside with Jack holding onto the top half of me and them at the other side of the rocks grabbing onto my feet to pull me across, kind of like a human stretcher. The one guy at my feet was a very old man that weighed half as much as I did. I thought for sure he would end up pulling himself into the water. We had to give him credit though. He had been hiking this section of the wall for many years, and we could barely keep up to him. At 78 years old, this guy was in incredible shape. They were going to start pulling on me too soon before I had my footing, Jack starting yelling at them that I was going to fall into the river and told them to wait. Finally they got me to safety. Jack was able to manage across behind me. What an adrenaline rush. Later we kept slipping so many times on rocks in the river that we just gave up completely and walked in the water to get across.

grain crusher

This was not what we had in mind when looking at the tour. Many others were upset, this was supposed to be a trip to take us to a non tourist part of the wall, not an adventure tour of river crossings and rock climbing. We and many others had brought our good cameras with us and were afraid we would fall into the water with them. We renamed this Leo's Crazy Wall Tour! We are not even sure if they are supposed to be taking people to this part of the wall. I doubt the government would allow tours in such dangerous circumstances. They won't even let you onto some sections of the touristic parts of the wall, and they are in much better conditions than this.

Jack in front of remains of a tower

Needless to say we both had really sore muscles for the next few days. Our arms were worse than our legs since we had to hold onto rocks and trees to climb up or down most of the time. What a crazy adventure. We wouldn't recommend it, as the price was a lot higher than going to other sections of the wall, we didn't see anything unique from what we saw at Simatai. The main boast of the Hostel is that you will be on the wall without all the crowds. Since there were 45 of us in the group it wasn't like we were alone. We had more solitude during our time on Simatai.

nice view of the valley

over grown wall section

there is a wall in here somewhere

tower

trees growing right up through the wall

trees growing up through the wall 2

wall 1

wall 2

wall 3

wall falling down

wall in pieces

we actually hiked along side the wall section here

What to heck have we gotten ourselves into?