One of our favourite trails for summer is the White River hike, a 12km trail that follows the White River downstream. We ford the river as we walk down the canyon – a great way to stay cool in hot weather. Click through to see 20 photos.

Here’s a report from our June 2016 Silk Road trip, made extra interesting with commentary from hiking guide Abu, who is from Xinjiang.

On the trip we travelled along the Silk Road from Korla to Kashgar, which is Abu’s home town. Along the way we visited 100-year-old mosques in Kuqa and Kashgar, the remains of ancient temples, Great Wall beacon towers, and caves with Buddhist artwork that dates back 1,000 years. As well as these cultural sites, we hiked and camped along the way.

Click through to read Abu’s report and to see all the photos.

During the Dragon Boat Festival we headed out to Huanghuacheng for a late afternoon hike that ended up with us watching the sun go down from the Great Wall.

We didn’t get a whole lot of sunset photos ourselves, but if you click through you’ll see a couple of them, plus a lot of photos from the hiking we did earlier in the day.

The Immortal Valley Loop is a nice long hike that takes us up on to the ridgeline of the mountains west of the Miyun Reservoir. We start in a park area, and hike out the back to get up to one of the peaks in the mountains.

On this visit the skies were blue and the hills were green – click through to see all the photos.

On this trip we spent five perfect days in the northwest of Gansu Province, visiting the Zhangye Danxia Landform and various Silk Road sights in Jiayuguan and near Zhangye City.

Click through to see photos from the Zhangye Danxia Landform, the fortress at Jiayuguan, Horsehoof Temple near Zhangye, and more!

Perfect weather, super scenery, and long views of the Great Wall at Gubeikou and Jinshanling – click through to take a look at the photos we took on the hike.

We hiked through the recently renovated Longquanyu section of the Great Wall, finishing up at the Little West Lake. As well as Great Wall, we saw a lot of greenery under clear blue skies.

Click through to see thirteen photos from the hike.

We scouted this trail in April, 2016, and this hike was the first time we’d taken a group up to the peak of Heituo Mountain.

It’s a tough hike, with a lot of steep climbs to get up to the 1,500m peak. The views from the top are really worth the effort, and on this visit we had the mountain all to ourselves.

Click through to see sixteen photos from the hike.

We set up a camping trip on the Great Wall Spur, carrying all our gear up to our campsite on the ‘spur’ section of the wall. Clear skies made for awesome photos of Great Wall, mountains, and the sunset - click through to take a look.

Seventeen pictures of the Great Wall and other views at Longquanyu. It was a clear sunny day, click through to see the photos!

During the May Day holiday we headed out to Inner Mongolia for our Tengger Desert Lakes trip, visiting some local scenic locations either side of our two-day trip into the desert.

Click through to see 60 photos from the desert – hiking, camping, and more!

This hike is a combination of two of our Level 3+ hikes: the Big Black Mountain to the Walled Village hike, and then the Moss Mountain walk.

It’s a long hike, but there isn’t a whole lot of climbing. That makes it a good choice if you’re interested in a long ramble in the hills of Huairou. Click through to see 23 photos of farmland and orchards, hills and mountains, and plenty of greenery.

We’ve done a clean up hike for Earth Day every year since 2009, heading out to hiking trails that have been somewhat spoiled by a buildup of trash and packing out loads of litter for disposal in a more appropriate location.

This year we teamed up with Gung Ho! Pizza to make our eighth annual Earth Day clean up hike part of the 1st Beijing Earth Day Festival, and we had a great turn out for the hike, with 26 people showing up to help out with the clean up.

We took on the challenge of cleaning up Nine-Eyes Tower, a tower on the Great Wall at Jiankou that’s 1,190m above sea level.

Click through to see all the photos.

The Flower Wood to the Ming Tombs hillwalking challenge was a 26km hike through the hills of Huairou and Changping, starting in the north of Beijing and finishing back on the city side of the mountains.

We know a lot of trails in this area of Beijing, and there are options for hikes of 10km, 15km, and 20km. This time we decided to join the whole lot up for a good long 26km walk. Maybe next time we’ll add the last section and make it 30km!

We like the Hemp Village to Gubeikou hike because – as well as great views of the Great Wall – we also get a look at rural life in the countryside as we walk through Hemp Village and the surrounding farmland.

You can get a look, too – click through to see the photos!