Hiking photos – Cypress Wells Canyon and Yongning, 2012/10/31

Our Cypress Wells Canyon hike follows a trail through a canyon into a bowl in which there are several abandoned villages. The hike continues up to a ridgeline where there’s a stretch of broken-down Great Wall to look at.

We started off at the entrance of an old park that looks like it’s not open so often any more. We’ve never seen other hikers in there, but there must have been more in the past.

The first half of the hike is the ‘canyon’ part, following an old gravel road between the canyon walls. The road leads in to a village which is mostly abandoned – there are occasionally a few farmers about, but not all the time—especially not during winter.

From the village, we followed a trail through forest, taking a turn off to climb up to a stretch of old Great Wall, said to date back to the Warring States period (pre-BC), but certainly extended and improved during the Ming Dynasty.

We took a break to explore the broken down wall, and then followed a trail down a steep hill, walking out to the main road where our bus was waiting to take us to lunch.

The weather was great, with clear blue skies above – an excellent day for a hike!