A looping walk over tricky terrain and unrestored ‘wild’ Great Wall on the west side of Jiankou, peaking at the impressive Nine-Eyes Tower.
The hike
We start out on a trail out the back of the village at Jiankou, climbing up and over a ridge and down again into a forested valley.
We’ll gradually head up the valley, turning off to climb a steep trail that leads to Er Dao Bian Tower, the start of the Nine-Eyes Tower loop. Er Dao Bian roughly translates as ‘Two Roads On Each Side,’ and at this point in the hike we’ll be at approximately 900m above sea level.
The Great Wall that leads up to Nine-Eyes Tower is not in good condition. The first section is now just a pile of rocks that leads up into a forest. Further up into the forest, we'll find the foundations of towers, and then some battlements and side walls begin to appear out of the trees.
The Great Wall that leads up to Nine-Eyes Tower is also very steep. We'll be gaining 300m of altitude on the way up.
Nine-Eyes Tower is nearly 1,200m above sea level. In its original condition it had three levels, and the lower level had nine windows on each side. It would have been an impressive sight, and still is to some extent—it's an unusually large tower, and repairs made in 2014 show the layout of its lower level.
We'll follow a hill trail back down to Er Dao Bian Tower and then hike the wall south towards the Chinese Knot section, passing around and over ten towers on a stretch of wall known locally as the 'Big West Wall'.
The first four towers are not in the best condition, and the trail we take sometimes skirts around sections that are too steep or too broken to walk on.
After a while we’ll be back on to more solid footing, and we'll get excellent views of the Big West Wall: solid and uncommonly tall foundations made of huge carved rocks topped with Ming Dynasty (1368–1644 AD) brickwork and towers.
At the tenth tower of the Big West Wall, just below the Chinese Knot, we’ll leave the wall and follow a trail back to Xizhazi Village – steep and slippery at the beginning, flattening out as we pass through a lovely forested area and the villagers’ orchards and fields.
Our bus will be waiting for us at the village carpark, and we'll unpack our picnic tables for snacks and cold drinks before we head back to Beijing.
Cost: ¥430 / ¥390 for members
See a full description, more photos, and book online at https://www.beijinghikers.com/hike-in-beijing/view/1987/nine-eyes-tower-and-the-jiankou-big-west-great-wall/
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