The weekend before this camping trip the weather was lovely and mild, and we were looking forward to getting out for a night on the Great Wall.

But then the weather turned cold again, and it even snowed the day before we were going to go out.

Did we still go? Of course ... but with two sleeping bags per person!

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After a late fall of snow closed the mountain roads to Shuitou Village, we had to change the plan for the hike. The new plan was a combination of a few trails, making it the ‘Silver Pagodas Plus’ – half of the Silver Pagodas hike, plus the two big hills between the pagodas and the Ming Tombs area.

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See a set of 30+ photos from a rainy and flowery trip to Wuyuan, in Jiangxi Province.

Lovely mild weather and reasonably clear skies meant this was a most pleasant hike up into the hills on the border of Beijing.

We walked up from the main road, then turned into the hills to hike up to the Great Wall. The hike down the wall took us into a narrow canyon, then out into the fields below Big Plate Camp village.

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The wall on the west side of Jiankou is a little less extreme than the steep and broken sections on the east side, but the views are just as good and you don’t need bouldering skills to make it through. It’s still steep in a few places, though.

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We have a few trails that go from Longevity Village over to the Ming Tombs area, and on this hike we did a longer version that took us past mines and quarries into a wild valley where we walked through abandoned village.

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On this hike we followed part of the Huanghuacheng Great Wall towards the reservoir at the Little West Lake. We hiked field trails to get on to the wall at Zhuangdaokou, and then followed an unrepaired section up into the mountains. Click through to see the photos!

The Jiankou to Mutianyu Great Wall hike is popular because you get a look at both repaired and unrepaired Great Wall.

We start off at Jiankou, with dramatic views of steep and unrepaired Great Wall, and finish at Mutianyu, where the wall has been repaired and looks like it might have when first built way back in the Ming Dynasty.

On this visit we had clear air and blue skies, which is great for photography – click through to see the shots!

We’ve been doing this walk since the early days of Beijing Hikers, and we know the area pretty well. That’s lucky, because it seems like there’s a surprise waiting every visit – a new fence, a new road, a trail so overgrown you can’t see it any more ... all kinds of things that require a detour to get back on track.

On this visit we found one new fence blocking the usual path, and the beginnings of a new road cut through the middle of a section that is usually heavily overgrown. There was also a nice surprise – a new trail up to a high point with excellent views.

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There’s a line of Ming Dynasty-era (1368-1644) Great Wall that runs through the mountains in the northwest of Beijing, and Zhenbiancheng is right at the far western end of it.

The wall here is fairly rough; weathered since initial construction, damaged during war, and parts of the wall here were also visited by people who ‘borrowed’ bricks to build houses in nearby villages.

Click through to see fifteen photos from a late-winter visit.

This is the easier version of the Walk Like a Pilgrim hike, where we walk down the big hill to finish instead of climbing all the way up. The hike features great high-mountain scenery, and on a clear day the views out over Changping and Haidian are spectacular!

After the long walk into Hemp Village we hiked up into the hills to get a look at the Great Wall, following field trails beside the wall before climbing up on to it at Gubeikou. With lovely clear skies and long views this was a great day out on the Great Wall.

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The Great Prayer Festival is an important date on the Tibetan calendar, and the ceremonies at Labrang Monastery in Xiahe are particularly well-attended. We mixed in with the crowds of pilgrims at the festival to see the ‘unveiling of the Buddha’, plus performances of the Cham Dance and various temple rituals.

With the monks in full costume, and the crowds of locals all there for the festival, the trip was colourful and exciting – click through to see all the photos.

We made our Moss Mountain hike a little longer by starting at Zhuangdaokou instead of walking right up to the Walled Village. Hiking a bit further was the right choice on this day, because the weather was perfect.

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See a set of 30 photos from our February 2017 trip to Yu County—ancient walled towns and villages, traditional parades and performances, and some short hikes in the countryside.