Great exit from the Great Wall Descent [Sun 11-4]

[More pictures of the second half of the Great Wall walk]

The total distance we walked was just 7-9 km but we took our time looking at the scenery and there were a lot of rough bits, so it took about three hours. There was actual a variety of sources of difficulty that made the wall trek fun:

• Steep stairs, as previously mentioned the stairs are sometimes no wider than my feet.
• Rough bits where the stairs had devolved into basically broken rock or might not have been properly carved in the first place.
• Smooth bits where the whole top of the wall was sheered off. The walk was still rough enough to give some traction, but there weren’t really fortifications on the side to use for support.
• Parts where the wall has given way (typically at former gates or such where there was only an arch and not the full wall base) that you had to traverse by going on a trail.

Anyways, I fairly stupidly did all my planned purchasing from our "helper" in the first half of the trip. This left me in a bit of a foul mood regarding the "helper" in the second half who regularly pointed out what great friends we were and how I could buy a book later. (I ended up buying a bit less than a book, but still). However, the trip was still far too fun for even that to really throw me. Katie showed more wit and wisdom than I did and actually managed to shake off her people for the whole second half.

The final exit was neat. There’s a gorge with a small river that you can pay 10 yuan to cross by a hanging bridge. After that there’s an easy and well-maintained walk down an artificial bit of wall to the tourist trap entrance/exit. We had lunch there and took our group shot. Traversing the wall was actually a fairly expensive journey (40 yuan at the start, 40 yuan for the second half, 10 yuan for the bridge (so $15 or so total) plus stuff I bought). However, it was well worth it particularly because the hike was fun in its own right even before considering the unbeatable views. That said, my favorite of the trip bit was probably still the bike-ride through karst country since that got me more of a feel for modern China.