Nine Eyes Tower Great Wall, 2016/12/18
See 20 photos from our hike up to Nine-Eyes Tower at the Jiankou Great Wall.

It was all blue sky in the mountains on this hike – a lovely change from the smog in the city.
We hiked up to Nine-Eyes Tower, one of the largest towers in the area and also one of the tallest – almost 1,200m above sea level.
At Nine-Eyes Tower we stopped to have lunch and enjoy the views.
After lunch we hiked down through forest to get on to Jiankou’s ‘Big West Wall’, and then hiked out to a village to finish.

We started hiking from one of the small villages at Jiankou.

There was snow left in shady areas.

The trail up to the wall lead us up a valley.

Forested areas just below the Great Wall.

Hiking up past a large boulder.

The pile of rocks is all that’s left of the Great Wall here. From this spot it took us about an hour to climb up to Nine-Eyes Tower.

It’s hard to tell that there was any Great Wall here at all.

Further up, though, the wall was in slightly better condition.

Prayer flags, and a red ribbon.

First to the tower, first to the sunny seats!

Count nine windows on each side of the tower – that’s where the name came from.

The railings were added recently as part of a questionable restoration project.

This part is steeper than it looks – lucky it wasn’t icy!

This part was icy, and we had to walk to the side.

Heading down past a repaired tower.

We hiked down the other side of the hill, on a trail that was steep at times.

We hiked up to Jiankou’s ‘Big West Wall’, using side trails to get around broken sections on cliffs.

Silhouette shot.

We hiked through a birch forest to finish the hike.

The sun was going down as we were finishing the hike.