Yudu Mountains and Sujia River, 2018/03/03
25+ photos from our hike over the Yudu Mountains and down the Sujia River, including a visit to Yinmeng Temple.
The Yudu Mountains hike is one of our new ones, and this was the first time we’d taken a group on it.
The first part of the hike was fairly tough: a big climb up the paved path to Yinmeng Temple.
Yinmeng Temple is sited at an elevation of about 1,000m – pretty high up, considering that we started the hike at about 500m! – and dates back to the Liao Dynasty. It was active as late as the Qing Dynasty, but fell into ruin during the 30s. The temple was repaired recently, and it’s popular with local pilgrims. We visited during Lantern Festival, and the path up to the top was busy.
Further past the temple a trail leads over a mountain pass and down to the Sujia River, passing an empty village.
We followed the river down towards Longqingxia, crossing on the ice and walking through groves of trees.
After a walk of about 4km down the river we made a big climb out of the river canyon to get back to the Beijing side of the mountains. It was a tough climb, but worth it for the broad views on the other side. A necessary climb as well—from that point there was no other way out of the canyon.
We finished with a walk out past Huangbai Temple.