Contents:
First Day
Halfway Guesthouse
Leaving Tiger Leap Gorge
First Day
On the bus to Tiger Leap Gorge I meet a 30-year-old English teacher from Guangxi named Wei Zhaozhou who says he too wants to trek the gorge. However, he doesn't have a huge pack like mine, so I doubt whether I will be able to keep up with him on the steep trail.
We get to Tiger Leap Gorge around 1:00 p.m. Wei Zhaozhou doesn't think there is enough time to get to Halfway before dark, so he wants to wait for tomorrow to set out. But I convince him there is plenty of time, so we set out right away.
Along the way we meet a man with a small horse who wants to rent out the animal to carry my huge pack. Wei Zhaozhou tells him that I already am a horse, but the man doesn't believe I can make it, so he follows along behind us, waiting for me to die of exhaustion. That path certainly is very steep and exhausting, but I don't die, and about an hour later he finally gives up and stops following us. However, the path just gets steeper and steeper, and I gradually fall behind Wei Zhaozhou. However, he waits for me at a bend in the trail with a great view of the river below and the towering peaks above. I am able to rest for five minutes; afterwards the trail ceases its incessant ascent, so I don't get so tired again.
Halfway Guesthouse
Around dark we pass some miners having supper from a kettle over a fire. They are working on a tungsten mine. We soon arrive at Halfway Guesthouse. We sit down to have dinner, then I hear someone yell "Dewey"! I look up and it is Leah, with her boyfriend Linn Crosetto, who is my good friend and classmate in computer science and Chinese at University of Washington. What a surprise it is to find that Linn and Leah happen to be staying here too! We have a delicious dinner with them, and stay at the Guesthouse for only 10 RMB ($1.20 US) per person, everyone except Linn and Leah sleeping in one big room full of bunk beds. We also meet a 24-year-old physics teacher from Guangdong named Wang Yaoqiang.
The next day we wake up earlier than Linn and Leah, so we leave without them. Wang Yaoqiang comes with us. After a few hours of hiking we come to Middle Tiger Leap Gorge, the narrowest, most turbulent part. We take a dangerously steep path down to the river. The rapids are violent here. You can be standing ten feet away from the water, and then all of a sudden a huge surge of spray will fly up high in the air and come down and drench you. You must be careful; if you were to fall into that torrent of water you'd be crushed to death instantly by the force of the surging water. I'm told no one has ever rafted this part of the river and lived to tell about it.
We climb up to a pathway cut into the side of the shear cliff, hundreds of feet up above the river. It's really neat, like being in a cave with one side missing, affording a great view. Then we climb the Ladder to Heaven, which is a ladder attached to the side of the cliff, nestled among the jungle of trees and plants growing out of the cliff face. It seems pretty dangerous, but fun. Above that are more ladders and steps carved into the cliff face. By the time we get to the top we are exhausted, even though we left our packs behind before entering Middle Tiger Leap Gorge.
We walk back to retrieve our packs and came to a place where a bridge is being constructed over a deep gorge. The workers are building an arch that will later support the bridge deck. On either side of the gorge they have constructed steel towers and strung many cables across from which to lower the sections of the arch into place. It's truly an amazing engineering feat! Each section of the arch is made of hollow concrete. We ask how much one section weighs and are told thirty metric tons! It looks like there are 35 sections in total; the final arch will be five sections long and seven wide.
Leaving Tiger Leap Gorge
We retrieve our packs, eat some prickly pear cactus fruit, and continue hiking. Now we are walking on the paved road, not a trail, so it isn't as interesting as before and our feet are hurting. Finally around evening we leave Tiger Leap Gorge behind us. The road we are on has very little traffic, but finally a small truck carrying sacks of concrete mix comes along and we are able to hitch a ride in the back to a small village.
Once in the village the three of us hire a little blue pickup truck to take us to the village of Baishuitai. The price is a hefty sum of 50 RMB (six dollars US) per person. I ride in the back with the packs and Wei Zhaozhou and Wang Yaoqiang ride in front. The ride takes several hours, but is very scenic and it is great to be outside breathing the fresh mountain air and feeling the warm summer breeze.
We get to the small village of Baishuitai after dark and order dinner. The girl serving us is quite a wacko. She keeps complaining in a goofy fashion about our various questions and requests; I can tell she doesn't like her job. After I give her a Seattle postcard she is pretty nice to me, but still acts pretty nutty. She keeps telling people she is going to marry me. We meet some other travelers, a man and his girlfriend, an ex-army man my age from Dalian, who is riding his bike around China for six months, and another man my age, all of them Chinese.
