Day 1:  Hike from Gubeikou to Jinshanling Great Wall 

From our meeting point (Lama Temple Subway exit B), our drive will take 2-hour before we reach the border of Beijing and Hubei province. Our first stop is at our farmer friends living next to the Gubeikou Great Wall. They a run a small homestay at the back of a valley surrounded by the Great Wall. With a view of the Crouching Tiger Great Wall, we enjoy a delicious lunch in their backyard. From here our adventure starts.

Gubeikou to Jinshanling Great Wall camping

It takes us only a 15-minute hike up the hill behind the farmhouse before we get our first glimpse of the Gubeikou Great Wall. After a few turns on the little bush trail, we reach the Great Wall.  We hike from tower to tower and take breaks on top of different watchtower. These breaks are a great chance to take some awesome pictures of this 1400 years old section of the Great Wall.

3 hours into the hike we arrive at the highlight of today’s trail, the Gubeikou General Tower. From this tower, you can see the “whole Gubeikou-Jinshanling Great Wall trek” from the start to the end. On a clear day, we can even see the highest tower at the end section of the Simatai Great Wall.

View over the Gubeikou and Jinshanling Great Wall

Here we side track a bit from the Wall to get around the restricted military section of the wild Gubeikou and Jinshanling Great Wall. The side track is just as pretty as we hike on the hill ridges and through the farm fields next to the Great Wall. in the early evening we take a break for and excellent home cooked dinner with our local farmer friends. After dinner we continue our quest to one of our most scenic camping spots right on a mountain ridge right next the the Wild  Jinshanling Great Wall.  Time for stargazing and sipping your favourite drink around the campfire in a surreal surrounding.

Our fabulous camping spot at Wild Jinshanling Great Wall

Day 2:  Hike from Wild Jinshanling Great Wall to the restored section of the Jinshanling Great Wall 

We get up early in morning for our perfect snapshot of the “Great Wall sunrise” and head down to our farmer friends for breakfast.  With renewed strength we   head straight to the Great Wall again. A small trail will bring us past an excellent view point and in no time we are on the Wild Jinshanling Great Wall.

The 10-km long Jinshanling Great Wall shows us some amazing defensive features like barrier walls, battlement walls, watchtowers, gun emplacements, shooting holes, horse holes, horse blocking walls.

We hike down the crumbled section of the wild Jinshanling for about 30 minutes till we reach at the most famous and best preserved  and partly restored section of the Great Wall. Here you can see how the Great Wall of China looked like during the Ming Dynasty.

Hiking the restored Jinshanling Great Wall

After a 1 hour  hike on the restored Jinshanling Great Wall we take a small staircase from the Salinkou General tower  and make our way to the parking lot where our driver will be waiting for us. By 2 o’clock we will be back at our Lama temple meeting point.