Baihe (the white river,
白河), is a small river run by
the north of Beijing. The valleys it passes is
one of the most famous climbing park in Northern China. Mixed with
sports, trad and multi-pitches lines, Baihe makes a perfect
backyard climbing paradise for climbers who living in the Beijing.
It is my first choice for this International labor day’s long
weekend. As none of our party finally can find a car, we have to
get there by bus. Fortunately, there is a bus line goes to a town
just 30km away from the valley where we are heading
to. So, we took the last bus on Apr
28th and got the town by 9pm. We got
the valley at about 10pm by a rented
minivan.
Day one, we headed to an area named
“xiaoguai”（小怪）. As
I had left rock for more than 7 months, I don’t want lead anything
before I really got back. So Mr.stone, our rope gun, leaded all
those 5.9~5.10ds and set up top ropes. Because the wall is
just by the river beach, and it was pretty windy
on that day. The sands have made a lot of troubles. At the end of
the day, all our packs, gears were covered by a layer of sand. So,
if it is windy, I don’t recommend this area. It was very crowded
however. There were more than 30 people packed in a small beach,
mixed with climbers, fishers, tourists, and ….guess what, BBQers.
Yes, those BBQers belong to our party, they are just a group of
crazy guys. They carried all those BBQ stuff to and from Beijing,
hostels and wall. I like BBQ and it was really very nice to have
BBQ meat ready when you just finished a 5.11.
lol.
Day two, what we (me, stone, and mohan)
planed was to climb the 9 pitches’ “Perfect feeling”
(完美心情). However, when we
carefully thought it through, it turned out impossible to get it
done by the end of day. It was because mohan is a
photographer, he need to do all the 9 pitches by
ascenders, and we also need to set up toprope for the rest of our
party first. So, we changed our plan to go another area call
“honeybee valley(蜜蜂谷)”。In this day,
I experienced my first fully packed minivan
transportation, in which we packed 9 people with all climbing gears
for 9 people and all BBQ gears into a minivan designed for 6
passengers, anyway, we made it. The climbings were not bad, we set
up 4 5.9~5.10cs, and practiced multipitch climbing and the
collaborations with our photographer. Stone and me tried a 5.11d,
but we failed at the crux which is just a slop above a half-roof, I
believe we can do it if it is on the ground, but this assumption
does not make any sense. We also tried another
roof, which supposed to be 5.10c, but we gave up after one try due
to the limitation of time. “honeybee valley” is a better place than
“xiaoguai”, you can find several two pitches trad lines, as well as
a whole wall of sports lines range from 5.7-5.12.
We rode back to the Beijing by bus again at 6:30pm,
and made home by 10pm.
It was a nice trip, and I have got my first
connection to the climbing community here in Beijing, Good. Now I
started to worry about how can I find time to train my body/fingers
back to climbing mode.:( How to balance my work, my hobbies and my
life.
I took no pictures in this trip.
-invoker
To see full story with images, please check my blog here !
