Today's adventure took us to Silver Mountain & The Pagoda Forest, which is roughly 50km North of Beijing's city center. The Pagoda forest is situated on a mountain and consists of peaks, cliffs and boulders. During the winter season, the mountain is covered in a silver-like snow, hence the name.
Let me start off first by saying that we couldn't have chosen a better day for hiking - it was absolutely gorgeous. Myself and five others hired a driver to take us north of Changping District to this beautiful location. Earlier this month was an international Strawberry Symposium in Beijing. On the drive to the mountain, it felt like we were driving through the World of Strawberry Shortcake. Another interesting observation: Beijing has a residential area called 'Vancouver Forest'. This real estate area is designed to mimic the natural landscape of Vancouver. I must say, I did feel a touch of Canada while driving by and I had a moment of 'I wish I were back in Canada'.
After almost 2 hours of driving through congested traffic, we made it to the Yinshan Pagoda Forest.
In an attempt to save some pocket change, we decided to buy the Beijing Hikers trail book and do some of the hikes on our own. In theory, this is a great idea; in practice, not so smoothly executed. We started our journey by wandering around the beautiful landscape. The ascent to peak was relatively relaxed with a couple steep sections.
We made it to the top after a couple of hours. The view was incredible. I am always happy to get away from the city whenever possible. The air felt clean and fresh, the sun was shining and above all, I was with great people! Our picnic consisted of oreos, bananas, crackers, granola bars, strawberries and watermelon - YUM! The clearly non-Asian friends were asked to have their picture taken with some locals, something I have yet to experience. I think it is because I look slightly Asian. I did, however, manage to get a sunburn on my face and a scratch or two from slipping into the bushes..
The descent is the where things got interesting.We took a different route down that lead us to a very rural village. According to our map, we were supposed to pass a bridge and a water tank before arriving to a look-out. Somewhere along the way, our hand drawn map lead us astray. Yes, I blame it on the map, not the navigators :)
You can imagine the stares we got (a bunch of foreigners) walking through this rural village. We didn't realize we were lost until we stopped and asked a 9 year old child for directions.. This was also when we lost some dignity. After asking several villagers for directions, we ended up at a dead end: water on one side of us and a mountain on the other. At this point we decided it was probably safer if we called the driver to come pick us up. Thankfully, the woman who was making dog food gave the driver directions, and 50 minutes later he arrived.
I would have liked to hike back to see the Pagodas, which is where we were supposed to end up, but we didn't want to risk getting lost and losing daylight.. you never know where we could have ended up.
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| Made it to the top! |
How does that saying go, "it's about the journey, not the destination"? This was definitely one of those days. Unfortunately we didn't get to the pagodas, but we now have a great memory of this adventure and a reason to return to this area - our unused pagoda admission stubs!
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