I Hacked the Hidden Great Wall With My Smartphone—You Can, Too

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(Photo: Thinkstock)

Standing alone in a field in rural northeast China, I was utterly and hopelessly lost.

With a carbon hiking pole in each hand and an LED headlamp strapped to my head, I must have looked like a space alien to the farmers tending to their morning chores. An old woman with a dull hoe slung across her shoulder shot me a wild, confused stare. A group of men taking turns chopping wood glared at me until one of them shouted in harshly accented Chinese.

“What are you doing here?” one of the men asked.

“Searching for the Great Wall of China,” I replied in Mandarin.

The men looked at one another with blank expressions, quickly scanning the empty ridges above to show me, without speaking, that there was no Great Wall here.

That’s when I pulled out my smartphone. Before I left on my journey to hike alone along China’s Great Wall, I tapped into an online network of travelers who had blazed their own trails along the wall, and recorded the GPS coordinates of the important turns and twists along the way. I used these strangers’ guidance to find my way to a remote, unrestored section of the wall just a few hours outside Beijing. The coordinates showed that I was nearly two miles off course, heading away from the wall and into unknown countryside. I turned around, followed the blue line on my phone’s screen, and was back on track.

For those searching for an authentic Great Wall trek far from tourists and tour guides, there is an entire infrastructure online devoted to hunting down the quietest and most remote sections. With just a little digging, I found a route that fit my schedule and skill level, complete with a digitally mapped trail leading from the neglected but hauntingly beautiful Gubeikuo section to the slightly crowded, but much more tourist-friendly Jinshanling.

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(Photo: Micah Spangler)

The crowd-sourced directions led me to a section of the wall that was crumbling at its corners and overgrown with vegetation. This was, as the hikers online dubbed it, the “wild” wall. Despite being only a few hours from Beijing, it’s a site that most day-trippers and tourists never see. And I had it all to myself.

The stretch I hiked runs for approximately eight miles. Without my little detour, it can be traversed in a single day. I, however, had planned on getting lost.

Once on the wall, I hiked until near sundown, mindful of the condition of the watchtowers I passed through every few hundred yards. Finally, with the sun turning a hazy orange, I found a spot to unroll my sleeping bag.

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(Photo: Micah Spangler)

Night quickly descended and the air plunged into the mid 30s. I soon remembered that my bag was rated for somewhere around 45 degrees. With only an inch of polymer down between the stone floor and me, I tossed and turned. In sporadic bursts the wind whipped through the windowless tower, sending strange sounds echoing through the hills and waking me from my mild slumber. This was something my Great Wall forum friends could not help me with.

I woke just before dawn, my frigid back all too sensitive to a change in the floor’s temperature. To the east, above a narrow watchtower-topped hill, the sun began to peak. I scrambled up the cracked, sloping ridge and looked north. Farmers in the distance were already out, seeding the ground by hand. Nothing about the scene said 2014; for all I knew I had awakened five centuries in the past.

That is, until I powered my phone back on and checked the next set of coordinates. I had four miles to go, but felt no rush. The wild wall wasn’t going anywhere.

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(Photo: Micah Spangler)

Plan your own Great Wall adventure:

• For more information on my specific hike, check out this post on the Great Wall Forum website.

• To reach Gubeikou from central Beijing, take the subway to Dongzhimen station. Follow the signs to the bus terminal and board the 980 bus to Miyun. To shorten your trip, make sure to take the express bus, which is denoted with 快—the Chinese character for “fast”.

• Once you arrive in Miyun you have two choices to reach the Great Wall: you can take the local 25 bus or catch a taxi. The 25 bus runs fairly often but you may end up waiting an hour or more for it to arrive. If you’re crunched for time, opt for a taxi. A ride to Gubeikou should cost no more that 200 CNY ($32 USD).

• Once you complete your hike and arrive in Jinshanling, take a taxi back to the Miyun bus station where you can board the 980 bus back to Beijing.

Micah Spangler lives in Washington, DC. He has traveled to over 20 countries on six continents.