Earth Day Clean Up Hike at the Jiankou Great Wall, 2015/4/25
Photos from our 2015 Earth Day clean up hike at the Jiankou Great Wall.
Were you on this trip? How did you like it? We'd love to hear from you.
• Send us feedback • Review it on TripAdvisor • Share this page on Facebook
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 headed out to the Jiankou Great Wall, a well-known stretch of ‘wild’ Great Wall that has become increasing popular amongst casual hikers in recent years. With the increase in visitors, there’s also been an increase in litter left up on the wall and along the trails that lead up and down.
Earth Day - April 22 - was on a Wednesday this year, so we waited until Saturday the 25th to gather a larger group of keen and green hikers for the cleanup.
The situation wasn’t as bad as we thought!
Later on we found out that we weren’t the only team to head out to Jiankou for an Earth Day clean up, which was great news. On last year’s clean up, at the Huanghuacheng Great Wall, there’d been almost more trash than we could carry out.
We did our bit, and carried all the trash back down to the main village. We didn’t leave the bags of rubbish there, though - we took them back to a trash depot in the city that’s better equipped to deal with it.
Before heading back to the city we dropped in on our Gung Ho! Pizza buddies Jade and John, enjoying some cold beers in their courtyard and hearing some of their tales about life in the village. Gung Ho! Pizza supported the clean up this year by hosting us at the courtyard and rewarding participants with a very generous discount offer for a meal at their newly reopened Lido branch, back in the city.
Big thanks to Gung Ho! for the support, extra big thanks to Anita F. for the donation, and super big thanks to everyone who joined in to help with the cleanup!
Hiking up to the Great Wall.
Great Wall in the background, green leaves and the flowers of wild apricot and pear trees in the foreground.
The trail to the Great Wall took us through forest.
This is what we like to see on the hiking trails - flowers, not rubbish.
The Great Wall at Jiankou.
Picking up a can of congee, seemingly the preferred snack of litterbugs.
The trashbags were already filling up with empty bottles and food wrappers.
Cleaning an area off the wall that is often used for a lunch spot.
Hard at work cleaning.
We hiked along the wall and through towers, cleaning as we went.
Looking back along the Great Wall towards the Chinese Knot.
Midway we stopped for a snack break.
“Shall we keep cleaning over that way?”
We moved on along the wall.
Walking down a steep section.
And inching down into a gully.
After we finished on the wall, we followed hill trails down to finish.
Back at the beginning, with the bags full of rubbish from the Great Wall.
Excellent work.
After the clean up we were hosted by Jade and John of Gung Ho! Pizza at their courtyard in the village.
Chatting with Jade.