The hike at Yajishan is fun by itself, with a long stair climb up to the temples followed by a scenic walk through the hills behind the temple.

The annual temple fair makes it even more lively, as people from the surrounding countryside squeeze in to check out the action.

Click through to see photos from the hike and the fair!

On a clear day in Beijing you can see big mountains out to the west of the city. This hike took us up along the top ridge of those hills. It was one of those clear days, and the scenery was excellent. Click through to see 31 photos from the walk.

The trail from Hemp Village to the Gubeikou Great Wall is long but fairly mellow, without a lot of steep climbs. The views are also excellent, particularly so on the clear and beautiful day we visited.

Click through to see seventeen photos from the hike!

The weather was just beautiful for this walk on the Great Wall, with clear and blue skies over the Great Wall and green hills. We walked through the farmland around the Walled Village and then up a steep trail to get on top of the Huanghuacheng Great Wall.

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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 again with Gung Ho! Pizza to make our ninth annual Earth Day clean up hike part of the Beijing Earth Day Festival.

We found less rubbish on the wall compared to last year, and that meant our clean up crew was able to get pretty much 100% of it, leaving the Great Wall clean and green again.

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As well as blossoms, flowers, and the gradual re-greening of the mountains, spring brings us the camping season! On this two-day adventure we camped by a tower on the Great Wall Spur, and woke up early to hike over to Jiankou via the Chinese Knot.

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The Heituo Mountain hike is one of the more recent additions to our repertoire of hikes, and it took us a little while to find all the trails. This time we walked all the trails we planned to instead of making off-track adventures, and can report back that it is a solid Level 5+ hike.

Click through to see the photos from the steep hike up to the top, our high-altitude picnic area, and the long walk through the wild valleys around the back of the mountain.

The Cypress Wells Canyon hike follows an old track through a canyon and into a broad and flat area in the midst of the hills. There is an old village hidden in there, uninhabited for a few years now.

Click through to see the photos – canyon cliffs and flowers, old houses, mountains, and great scenery.

The skies were blue and the flowers were blooming at the Huanghuacheng Great Wall – perfect for a hike.

Click through to see seventeen photos of Great Wall, mountains, and the flowery scenery.

Thirty-five photos from a trip spent trekking around the mountains of Guizhou Province—hills, mountains, and the folk traditions and customs of the ara.

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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