The Bamboo Forrest: A C-land hiking extravaganza

As our bus wound it's way up the side of a mountain I was both surprised and excited. I was excited because: 1. we were seeing mountains covered in trees and bamboo!! (this is a far cry from the forever flat, cemented streets of Shanghai). 2. We were on our way to go hiking, which I dearly love and haven't gotten quiet enough of while living in a city of 18 million people. I was surprised because as our bus sped it's way up slope, I noticed that there were actually guard rails between the road and the sheer drop that didn't level out for many hundreds of feet.

After much climbing, our bus pulled it's way nearer to a parking lot. Judging by the number of other buses, and the sheer mass of people I should have known what lay ahead. However, for the time, my mind was aglitter with the prospect of hiking in an uphill direction.

Making our way through the parking lot, and up to the entrance our guide informed us that there were 3 levels on the way up at which you could cross over from the upward path, to the downward path. We were told, if we were "very strong" we could make it to the third level. We had 1.5 hours to make it to the top, and make it down (we were shooting for the 3rd level) so we headed up the path in earnest.

We quickly came upon a wall of people. Apparently all of China had come to this same hike on the same day. As we wound in and out, between, through, around, making our way up the man-made sometimes cement, sometimes rebar, path and stairs.

As we hiked up, dressed in running shoes, shorts, and a t-shirt-- and, became overall more sweaty than we were when we started, I was amazed to see Chinese women and men, dressed to the nines, and wearing dress shoes.. or even... high heels.

Chris caught these great shots of a couple anonymous woman hikers:


Hiking in China sure is different than hiking in the US.

In other news:
• We made it to the very top-3rd level- strong hiker- level in our allotted time.
• We were hiking in what was considered a "bamboo forrest," so it was no surprise when I came across a wonderland of bamboo sticks that had been chopped down. Well pole vaulter mode kicked in, and my excitement for using one of the original pole vault poles kicked in:

Ahhh gude times.