China

Well it has been a while since I wrote last, but that doesnt mean that stuff hasn't been happening.  On the contrary.  Stuff has been happening.  Although right now I am back in NZ, for this blog i'm going back to China, with an account of the most intense mission I think I had the whole of last year - dominating the Great Wall.  The following is a word for word extract from my diary, spelling mistakes and all, written just a couple of days after surviving the journey.  It is long, but read it, things do get a little crazy. I enjoyed reliving it again, and trust you will enjoy reading it.

The Great Wall

Met up with 6 couchsurfers early in the morning.  A couple living in Beijing, a couple passing through.  Our leader for the day, a resident couchsurfer who had been to the wall several times.  I had on me my 7D, a backpack, food and water for the day.  We bussed out there and were at the base of the climb at midday.  Freezing morning, but the sun was out and we had a fantastic blue sky day for it.  The wall was right above us and some very steep gulleys to get there.  Our path was pretty much straight up a ridge, climbing over anything in our way.  Could walk in trousers and a jumper, but when out of the sun and stopped it was relatively fresh to say the least.  A lot of scrambling.  While walking up if you turned around you could see countless ridges stretching to the horizon. 

Our route to the top - straight up

Some stretches quite steep and hard to see how close we were getting, before suddenly, bam, there is the wall.  Climbed a crumbling bit and all of a sudden you are on top of it all.  We were at an unrestored section of the wall, parts of which were crumbling, parts of which are very dangerous, but phenomonally beautiful to watch it stretch as far as you could see in both directions.  To the east we could see the tourist parts, cable cars taking people up.  But our section, we only saw four groups walking the whole day.  We had a small amount of food, I had bought a coconut loaf of bread.  Yum.  Checked out the first fort we saw.  Stunning views (the pic below was taken from it looking out to the tourist section) but very very cold inside, with the breeze shooting through and cutting you.

Where first climbed onto the wall. The easy bit.

We decided to do a loop that would take us west, over the dodgy crumbling section, from which we could take another ridge down to our starting point.  The wall is super crumbly here and we were making our way down from the highest point, so had to be very careful with our steps.  Some sections were 85 degrees straight down.  Got about 20min into the decent and to a very hairy part with very few footholds.  Chris (an investment banker from NY, who could speak but not read Chinese) was first down.  We had been talking about spending the night on the wall earlier but still undecided.  Rest of the group found the decent too dangerous so turned back.  From then on it was just Chris and I.  There was a group infront of us and I had to wait until they were all down, as every time I stepped, more hill would crumble down.  Such steep sections to build the wall on and so many heavy rocks to make the wall.  Hard to comprehend how it was built.  Sides 3-5m above the surrounding ridge and 3-5m wide, with towers every couple hundred meters.

Hey bob, whats say be build a little wall up on that ridge over yonder?

We decided to stick with the group ahead and would follow them to the closest point to the exit, so we could then make a choice whether to stay the night or not.  Thought the section we had just done was bad, but another hour of walking, and now 4pm, we found the toughest 30m section.  Straight down.  Pure rock climbing.  The wall was no longer there, only rubble 30m below.  The 3 dudes ahead went first, 2 guys and 1 girl.  The girl was finding it tough.  It was. There were tears. They finally got down.  Chris went down and then it was me.  I went down as far as I could, then handed chris my bag, before attempting the scariest part.  I had to turn around to face the wall.  Very tough in itself.  Couldn't see where foot holds were so had to ask those below.  Got to one section where I was pretty much marooned.  Impossible to go back up and very difficult to get down.  Foot holds were 1.5m to my right and 1m below.  Hand holds were 50cm to my right.  Loose rocks tumbling to the rubble 10m below.  I was on my own here.  No one to help.  Situation could easily panic in, but had to put that out of my head.  Physically I knew I could do it, but mentally I just had to trust myself to put total faith in the hand holds.  After a minute of composing myself, it was now or never.  Grabbed the hand holds tight.  My legs dangling, searching for the safety of the next foothold.  Lowered myself slowly and found the spot.  Sweet, next 10m a bit easier, but still had to be very careful, as every second step had a tendancy to dislodge a brick and send it crashing below.

The dude is standing on the last good foothold before the 10m time to crap your pants decent.

Looking back up at the decent - in particular the missing bit halfway up.

At the bottom we told the group ahead that we were staying the night.  Equiped with no food, they insisted on giving us their spare food.  We thanked them and said goodbye.  It was getting dark. Chris and I had a short conference.  We had to make the call whether we would stay or not.  It would be dark in under an hour.  There was not going to be a moon till halfway through the night.  We didn't have a torch.  The pass before the hut was way to dangerous to go back up in the cold and dark, as was the one 50m past the hut.  We made the call to stay, for the experience.  Neither of us knew the next time we would be back, so time to live the moment.  Ok.  The decision was made.  For better or worse, we would be on the wall overnight.  It was cold, very cold, but not too much wind.  Forecast for Beijing was -8degreesC overnight, we were exposed and on the top of a mountain.  our estimates were -10degC as cold as we should expect.  So now for the plan.

The wall snaking into the distance, the sun dropping, and our accomodation for the night bottom left.

First, to put on every bit of clothing I had.  I was wearing jeans, thin socks, sneakers, a thin t-shirt, thin jumper and a shell jacket.  I had 1 further layer of thermals, thick socks, long johns, long sleeved top and beanie.  But to put them on I pretty much had to get naked first.  Brrrr.  Haha.  Now clothed and with our gear (me basically my camera and a 500ml bottle of water, Chris his food, a few lollies, savoury snacks and his camera) safely in place, it was time to collect wood to light a fire while there was still light.  A quick scout of the are showed me just how isolated we were.  The only wood was growing between the cobbles on the wall, or places where the bricks had eroded.  The sides of the wall here were 3-4m straight down, so no way to get wood from outside our 'patch'.  We were stuck on a 100m stretch of wall with very few decent sized trees.  No leaves on the trees as it was winter, but lots of dry leaves on the ground to start a fire with.  We pretty much took to every shrub on our section of the wall, and had a modest amount of wood to show for it.  Questionable if it would last the night through, but the fire's warmth should be a good boost and will keep us busy most of the night.  Collected some leaves etc from the roof of the fort, but had to be careful as there were holes in the roof where the bricks had literally caved in. 

This is wood that would have been great for the fire, if only it wasn't growing just out of our reach down below the wall itself.

We put together first attempt at fire, little bit of tissue paper we had found, and some smaller stuff on top to catch alight.  The base caught and burned very well, but stuff on top no good.  2nd attempt, my try.  Layed what I thought to be a pretty good base, but same problem.  The wood on top would not catch.  Smoked, but no flames.  Third attempt Chris' try.  Big amount of leaves, hot flames, but still same problem, and fire didn't catch.  Decided next try would be our money maker.  We switched locataions so that there was a bit more through draft to get enough oxygen in.  Set a massive amount of leaves, well ventilated with sticks to give air and plenty of wood lined up to catch on.

Mean.

It was dark now, so I was using my lighter to illuminate the area while we set the fire.  Great.  Looks good.  Time to get warm.  Went to light it, and there was no 'click', tried a couple of times before taking the metal ring off the lighter to look closer.  God damn it! The fucking 1 yuen lighter (20c) had melted itself and the ignition while illuminating the area.  Shit my balls.  There goes the fire plan.  Atleast the wood may be of assistance to the next person who needed fire, as it should have dried by then.  But the realisation had hit that we had to get through the night without a fire.  It was close to 7pm, the sun went down around 5pm and wouldn't be up until 7am the next morning.  We had 14 hours of sub zero temperatures to battle against.  No sleeping bags, no tents, no blankets, no fire, no real food, just two guys in a 1000 year old fort on the great wall.

Really mean, and our home for the night.

An action plan was thought out.  We had our 'living quarters' which where were we would 'hang out'  A loose hourly schedule was devised as we realised sleep was not an option.  Each hour would consist of 15min of exercise (push ups, sit ups, boxing and running on the spot), 15 minutes of 'hanging out', 15 minutes more of exercise, and 15 minutes of activities - taking photos, discussing the universe, eating our little supplies etc.  The plan evolved as the night went on, but at least we had things to do to keep our minds off the cold.  Areas in the fort were given names as their uses became aparent.  We had our hanging out room where we sat, huddled, talked and listened to music (at least my ipod was fully charged).  We had our fire place, that never saw a fire, a wood storage area, the wind alley (to be avoided - where the wind constantly blew through), the gym - where we would work out, and the terrace which had good shelter and a great outlook over the wall, stars and the distant town, far out of reach in the vally below.

Chris running on the spot to keep warm on the 'terrace'

Keeping active was the only way to get through the night.  I hadn't done a single push up in the last 6 months, but would have done several hundred of them over the night, would have run on the spot for several hours too.  Our huddle positions left our toes, shoulder blades and knees exposed.  Warming up the torso was ok with pushups, but toes very hard to keep warm.  I devised an insulator (a plastic bag filled with leaves) that I would tie up, put over my feet and place a rock on top of it.  Quite effective and allowed me to sit for 20min at a time, rather than tapping out after 10min with frostbitten toes.  When exercising it would normally take the first 15min to get feeling back into the toes and generate some heat in the body.  The next 5-10min were to generate extra heat so that the toes would have an extra 5min grace before they started to freeze again.  A few hours into the night, while 'hanging out' we could feel the wind gusts wafting around the corner into our living quarters.  We needed some protection.  Thankfully there were a number of bricks for the purpose.  We felt slightly bad at moving 1000 year old bricks, but we needed the shelter.  A wall was erected, 80cm high, to block the wind, and whether it worked or not, it was a good psychological victory.

Flash with 30 sec exposure, and moon with which to write letters with.  Pity no one could get our message.

The conversation through the night was good, and couldn't have had a better person to survive the night with.  We talked ex girlfriends, girls, jobs, travel, ambitions, philosophy, music, astronomy, photography, but my favourite conversations were the 'what do you want to do next' ones.  If we were hanging out the conversation would normally be "you want to do some exercise soon?"  "yeah man, sounds good".  When exercising it might be, "hey man, i'm going to the terrace soon, want to join?" and when on the terrace it would be, "hey, why don't we go to the gym for a bit, then hang out".  About 5 hours into the night Chris realised that he had a torch on him.  Classic.  But it was cool as we could use it for light paintings in our photos. 

Light Painting our Fort

He had an original 5D, a nice camera.  We got some good snaps, but too cold to stay out for too long, and very hard to get focus.  I had only had my new camera for a few days, so a good test for it.  Had to keep the battery down my pants when not using it, as the cold sapps the juice pretty quick.  The stars at the beginning of the night were unreal.  Then came the moon, and then the clouds.  It kept getting colder and colder the whole night.

The Stars

The last 3 hours before dawn were crazy cold, and ended up spooning each other for warmth.  Tiredness had sunk in but it was almost impossible to sleep.  But I found when i closed my eyes I could dream while being awake, in that awesome pre-dream stage.  This was after about 10 hours in and I think Chris was starting to question whether I was going delarious or not.  I would shut my eyes and my subconsious brain would take over, but I was able to describe vividly what I was seeing.  "I am watching tanks on top of a cliff battling it out with dinosaurs, before a plane driven by a penguin swoops down and picks me up to take me to a milkshake bar".  it was literally like having a music vide/cartoon/cgi/montage playing in my head accessable at any time by shutting my eyes, and it was awesome.  i was starting to wonder if I was going delarious too.  Time passed fast, time passed slow.  I didn't eat much, my water bottle had frozen. 

Going crazy?  Nah, totally sane, you can see it in my eyes.

Sunrise was lacklusture and to be honest I didn't care about taking too many pictures.  Took a quick video of our surroundings, and listening to it now my voice is so slow, and I sound like I am out of breath.  But the morning light gave us the ability to navigate our way back down, a 3 hour walk followed by jumping onto the first local Chinese bus we felt like we had just found civilisation.  What a night.  What memories.