We’ve planned this hike so that we’ll be at Zhengbei Tower during the ‘golden hour’, the hour before sunset in which the sunlight gets an extra filter as it passes through more of the atmosphere and (hopefully!) gives some lovely soft and warm light for photos of the Great Wall and scenery. And hopefully we’ll miss all the traffic on the motorway coming back … fingers crossed!

This hike shows the highlights of the southeast part of the Jiankou Great Wall, covering many of the best parts of the Jiankou to Mutianyu trail.

It’s not a long hike, but it is rough and tricky. We’re going to avoid the dangerous big cliffs, but you will need to take care on some steep and tricky ascents and descents, as well as a few narrow sections.

The hike

After a short walk up a dirt road and then a dirt track, we reach the ‘Jiankou’ section of the Jiankou Great Wall. The word ‘jiankou’ means ‘arrow nock’, and the steep V-shaped dip in the Great Wall here inspired that name.

A few years back some basic repair work was done here to stop the Great Wall crumbling away. The workers did a good job, and the repairs make it safer to hike. (Previously it was extremely difficult to hike, as well as slightly unsafe.)

We’ll be following the Great Wall to the east, heading for Zhengbei Tower. Along the way we’ll be hiking up and down steep steps and stairs, passing through towers, clambering up some rocks, and taking short detours around broken or dangerous sections.

(This part is the ‘extra’ section we used to do on our Jiankou Great Wall to Beigou Village hike.)

The wall will lead us to the big cliffs below Zhengbei Tower. We won’t be taking the cliffs route up to the tower – this is the dangerous part at Jiankou, and nearly every year there’s news about serious accidents on this section.

We’ll detour off the wall to get around the cliffs, and then hike a hill track to get up to Zhengbei Tower.

After a rest at Zhengbei Tower we’ll start an out-and-back hike to the Ox-Horn section of the wall. The Ox-Horn is a steep section of wall that makes a tight curve up to a local peak that’s 1,019m above sea level. We’re going to first cut across the bottom of the curve on a forest path and then hike up the steepest side—much easier to go up than down, especially on the smoother flagstones near the top. We’ll take a break at the top and hike down the other side of the curve, and then walk back to Zhengbei Tower.

After a last look at Zhengbei Tower we’ll hike down hill tracks into forested hills—about 1.8km to the finish, preferable to the 4km off-wall slog to Beigou Village. On the way down, we’ll have views over to the other side of the valley and should be able to spot Jiankou’s ‘Big West’ Great Wall and Nine-Eyes Tower.

We’ll finish at our local guide’s guesthouse with drinks and snacks before driving back to Beijing.

Rain date

If the weather doesn’t look suitable for this hike we’d look at postponing to May 3 or May 4.

Planned itinerary