Sichuan Van Life
A better-late-than-never post by: Ryder Stroud
with contributions from Nico Cacerés
FIRST A TOUR OF THE VAN
For the winter season Nico and I lived cozily in a Jinbei 面包车/miānbàochē/loaf of bread car/breadbus (take your linguistic pick).
While the setup isn’t as posh as some of the slicker setups I have seen from the US (Desk to Dirtbag’s setup comes to mind), it has been a workhorse to get the job done between being a space to live and being a people mover. Our climbing crew currently has a rotating cast of five climbers: Hang, Dane, Locky, Nico, and I, though Nico and I are the most frequent residents of said van domicile. Keeping things simple and modular allows us to easily switch to accommodate trips where our friends want to load up and hit the road, too.
To start, I built up the tried-and-true, elevated sleeping platform, elevating it ~34 cm (~13.5 inches with convenient rounding of numbers), which has been plenty for storing backpacks—my 70L Osprey Aether multiday bag can squeeze underneath when packed with soft goods). I kept the costs down by getting free scrap lumber from some friends who are renovating their farmhouse in Dali City. No need to fuss too much over it’s appearance. Just make sure it’s built to hold the weight to not collapse on the gear below and spacious enough between the legs so you can put multi-day packs, duffels, and/or plastic storage bins beneath.
I cut the sleeping platform to accommodate the epic climber mattress: a triple-panel Climb X bouldering pad. Of course, the amazing thing is that it is not only a comfortable sleeping platform, but indulges my occasional mediocre boulderer. If we see a boulder on the side of the road that looks rad? We can pull over with the pad and climb it! The triple pad is just enough to comfortably sleep 2, and can even facilitate a desperate “survival spooning” if the temperatures drop so low outside that van residents require extra body heat to survive… it has almost happened on occasions.
The breadbus’ kitchen has, in recent weeks, become the home for the kitchen, which has worked out now that the temperatures allow for dinner parties outside. Previously, the kitchen supplies were in the side of the van, between the door and the side of the platform that left an open space in the side. However, as the temperatures in Yunnan and Sichuan finally started to feel less miserable, I realized that the back of the van would better facilitate hanging out and the ever-classy dirtbag dinner parties. With that in mind, I purchased a few camp chairs, some more storage boxes and a good pump for the water tank.
Burt with all of these people flocking to the breadbus for good times, I still had to consider how to possibly transport folk to the climbing, too.
The real challenge at first was making the bread-bus modular enough to switch between the people-mover mode and 2-climber dirtbag mode without too much hassle. Of course, I could not just turn the entire back into a sleeping platform and storage area, otherwise, Locky, Dan, and Dane would have no space.
You might think the solution would be simple: go true dirtbag and have them recline and hang out on the HUGE bouldering pad in back, right? Screw traffic regulations! Screw authority!!! ARRGH.
As much as we considered the “AARGH” option, I thought that since I am already circumvented some paperwork in China to get the van driver’s license (apparently, on paper, tourist visa holders like me should not be allowed to get a license to own a car…), I thought it best that we do not tempt the arbitrarily applied powers of local policemen, especially out towards the Tibetan border. What came about was another mod to the van system.
The platform covered only 2 panels of the pad, leaving a gap comfortable for people to sit in on the back bench seat between the trunk, where we keep all of the climbing gear, and the platform in front of them. While the pad is rigid enough to bridge the gap between platform and seat, I have a separate board that bridges the gap between the platform and the seat (when the seat is folded down).
About the knick knacks and van features:
I added a few things to make the van more, well, entertaining to live in.
First, I had to find a quick fix for the crap sound system that came with the van. Apparently, I quickly learned that the bizarre, not-normal USB jack could not support an iPhone or any real mp3 player. Instead, it was manufactured to work only with a basic SD card reader. Very made-in-China style.
Anyways, rather than continue to grumble, I just decided to put a separate speaker behind the driver’s and passenger’s seat. I bought a big bar speaker off a friend who bought it on Interwebz special and was not really using it. Boom. Done. Awesome sound system acquired. This is actually a key feature of the car for covering the long, tiring drives into western Sichuan.
Second, I added a power inverter that feeds off the cigarette lighter jack. I then added a power strip with 3 plugs, which is enough to power the speaker and charge electronics.
Third, I fashioned some very 差不多(chàbùduō/super mega OK) curtains along the back passenger windows and the trunk windows. I also cut costs by finding some scrap fabric from the same friends who gave me free lumber. I got some very cheap rope from a local Dali hardware storm and draped the fabric over the line and had the lines attached to the ceiling handles; instant, super cheap curtains. The back window is covered by a flag (not of the American or Chinese variety) that is held up on hooks. I am still thinking about a front curtain, but that effort has been curtailed by a lack of ceiling handle above the driver’s seat.
Finally, I tacked a lemon fresh air freshener to the dashboard. Seriously, it keeps the van smelling fresh long after the memory of having washed clothes, especially socks, has faded into the mists of the past…
Together all of the van modifications probably cost me less than $50 (~300 RMB)
So what have we done with the van? A lot of it involves trashing the suspension and/or alignment on terrible roads, but it is all in service of getting to the hills!
II. Tooling Around in Sichuan
“It’s f***ing cooooold outside, dude!!!” Nico hollers as we cook dinner inside the van on the tiny plank that has become the designated ‘kitchen.’
Hanging out in the van in the Gongga Shan/Minya Konka （贡嘎山）cooking some dinner as temperatures just under the pass (~4000m) dipped to -15C.
We are camped in the van on the side of a mountain pass road at ~4100 meters in the 贡嘎山/Minya Konka/Gongga Shan region. Inside, we are wedged into our sleeping bags, recoiling from the small crack we have opened in the window to cent the cooking exhaust. The outside temperature has dropped to -10ºC, and we know that it will only get colder as the night goes on. Inside, however, is a small oasis we call home: a Jinbei bread bus with a sleeping platform, a kitchen, and enough climbing gear to scale a mountain.
Nico stirs the pot containing our roast vegetables. The steam and the scent of garlic waft through the cramped quarters in the back of the van, adding a little bit of a festive dinner party atmosphere to the otherwise quiet end to the evening that defines traveling around in the van.
If you ever have ambitions to climb in Sichuan in winter, bring lots of warm clothing. Though the winter is rather dry—the heavy snows come in early spring—the temperatures, especially at night, drop well below 0C (and really far below 0F if you head to the higher elevations). In the mountains, you often find yourself well above 2000m at the very least once you cross the first big passes to the west of the Chengdu Plain. The sun instantly becomes a commodity. In these tall, narrow mountain valleys, we long for the little warmth the sun brings, as we watch its rays creep too slowly across the valley rim to the floor and eventually to the van. Daytime temperatures allow you to sit outside on a mat with a puffy when the sun is out. But immediately after the sun sets, getting in the van and into the sleeping bags is the only real way to be happy-ish.
Between two people, winter sleeping bags, the occasional bivy sack, and the van itself, we can stay plenty warm. But any time we have headed out to base camp for a trip or stayed out past sundown, we have been cold—very cold.
When it comes to getting places in this part of China, the road is often muddy, full of construction, and rocky. Roads that are designated “national highways” are still under construction or under repair from the constant summer rains, floods, landslides, and earthquakes that hit the region—the last item on that list being the least frequent.
A typical drive between a place like Kangding, the nearest large town to Minya Konka, and Shuangqiaogou, the epicenter of Chinese ice climbing, goes a little something like this:
“Alright, Nico, what does the map say…”
“It looks like you take…”
Nico and I drive over the "nicer" section of road leading out to Minya Konka/Gongga Shan/贡嘎山. The road previous and after was unpaved and full of potholes that could destroy the undercarriage of the car. Let this be a warning for those of you looking to drive through here =D...
$#%^&@*#$&^%#^@*&$^#@O#$*#@(*(@(#*$&
What follows is a string of expletives as our car drops onto a rock-strewn road, as we get passed multiple times by large tractor trailers, speeding to drop off their cargo at the massive construction zone 10km ahead.
Our first leg of the trip to Kangding alone, though it only crossed about 250km of ground between Chengdu and Kangding, took nearly 10 hours, the result of a 60km-long construction zone as we entered the mountains.
What does the bread bus look like after all of this? Well, even though it only has 3000km on its odometer at this point, it looks like a working van that has been slogging through Chinese mud for years; the mud became so thick at one point of the drive that no light—sunlight, headlights, or otherwise—could make it through the back window. Cleaning also comes Chinese-style, as the cheap price of the bread bus means that, among many other features, the van lacks any sort of rear windshield wiper. I am sure the suspension is smiling up at me from beneath the car with each big pothole I have driven across.
But what is the deal with the climbing?
Well it is a tension between the desire to climb a lot on established routes versus striking out on our own to seek out a line in the distance that may or may not be good.
Nico and I tried the latter with a very disappointing outcome the first time around. Having arrived in the Gongga Shan/Minya Konka area, we immediately wrote off the idea of getting anywhere near the Gongga Shan Massif or its neighboring massif to the northeast, Lamo-She.Temperatures at night in the nearest town of Kangding dropped well below freezing. As we ventured higher up the mountain pass road to the north (~4200m), temperatures plummeted well below zero Celsius overnight.
From the road we caught glimpses of a massive banner cloud flying off Minya Konka’s summit, and we did not have the gear to take on Lamo-She (~6200m) in the dead of winter. So we decided to tool around in the car to see what we could find nearby in the ~5000m range. The far side of the pass revealed rolling grasslands as far as the eye could see, and the peaks around the passitself were quickly turning into choss. So rather than venturing further out into the unknown to see what was beyond those grasslands (likely very dumpy roads that would further massacre the breadbus’ suspension), we turned around to see what smaller peaks were around Kangding.
Sure enough, we spotted a bunch of ~5000m peaks popping out in the distance from behind the chossy peaklets that lined both sides of the mountain pass. We suddenly had a flare of hope that we might have something to climb, rather than tooling around for hundreds of kilometers in the van without anything to climb.
With a little fresh kick in our otherwise cold boots, we fished out the telephoto lens and spotted what looked like a bunch of steep snow/ice couloirs that cut up the sides of two peaks.
“Man, do those couloirs look awesome… Damn, look at that one!” I exclaim, as I point to the steeper of the two ridgelines!”
“Yeah, that’s steep,” Nico grins. “I don’t want it, but if you want it, bro, I’ll belay you.”
Couloirs sliced up both mountain faces. Nico and I got excited.
“There are a ton of gullies up there!”
I start getting excited that I might, for the first time, dive into a climb in China that is a true adventure. No beta on the Internet, no route beta from friends. Nico and I were just going to ditch the van at a turn out and go look for a route.
“How long do you reckon we will be up there? 4-5 days?” Nico asks.
“Yeah, let’s pack up a bunch of food. We can hit one or two gullies before moving camp to underneath the other face.” I say, still looking through the camera.
With that, we pack and head out the next morning.
Following native trails and cattle meadows, we contour along some grassy hillsides until we arrive beneath our first target: a summit we estimate to be 4800-5000m. From basecamp, things still look promising. Though it doesn’t seem to be granite like the large stones we found littering the roadside down below, it seems palatable for climbing. However, as we look up at all the gullies, we begin to wonder if there will be any ice at all.
Before we can ponder the prospect too long, we soon have to turn our attention to the setting sun and the temperatures falling faster than a lead weight on Jupiter. Things begin to get nippy as the sun drops behind the ridgeline to our west. Without the vestibule, we consider cooking in the tent directly, even if the prospect is a bit cramped.
But once the sun disappears completely for the day, we dive into the tent without question, as the temperatures fall to -15C and keep falling. We somehow miraculously manage to create an amazing vegetable (FRESH) stew with potato noodles (think Udon noodles Chinese-style; read with a ridiculous accent, if the spirit moves you to do so). Spending time slightly immobile outside the tent has consequences: like quickly realizing your fingers and toes get painfully cold… even inside boots and gloves…
Stomaching warm food, the two of us wrap up in our sleeping bags and bivy bags for the night, prepped for a summit day.
Sunrise brings awfulness and coldness. For some reason, our fervor to dive into the sleeping bags the previous night caused us to leave our boots outside the tent, which have now nicely matched the air temperature. The tent interior is coated in a measurable thickness of frost, even with all 5 vents in the tent open.
“Dude, I can’t feel my toes.” Nico shivers violently as I don my Baturas, slowly dreading that I will reach the same conclusion.
We brew tea and oatmeal mostly in silence, hoping that some rays of sunlight will miraculously break the laws of the universe and decide to bend around the mountains blocking us from the sun’s warmth.
As we approach across the boulders and occasional meadows, one thing becomes clear: the gullies up close do not resemble the gullies we saw from a far. Though we began roping up for what we thought would be a great steep snow gully climb instead turned out to be loose snow over scree. After fiddling with the rope, we repacked it into the bag, grumbling as we felt our crampon frontpoints grinding down on the crappy metamorphic rock shifting underneath the snow.
With every step the rock quality worsened, and I began debating with myself if this was even worth it to even reach this chossy summit.
Exploration? Awesome. That is definitely why I came to China.
Exploration of crap? A lot less awesome in person.
Nico shrugs. “Well, we have come this far.” He gestures up towards the looming notch above our heads.
Our meager little alpine rock rack along with a smattering of ice screws now looks ridiculous. What little rock that is not crumbling on this shale pile certainly would not ever hold a fall.
“You’re right,” I say. “Let’s just finish the damn thing. Looks like this entire little range is jingus.”
“Let’s do it fast. I still can’t feel my toes and it has been well over 2 hours…” Nico looks worryingly down at his boots, rocking back and forth testing for some degree of feeling.
Topping out in the choss notch, the rock looks terrible up-close. It is a tottering mess of shale flakes and blocks perched tenuously atop one another. I stare up at the epic chossery as I remove my crampons, but quickly shift my attention as I realized the huge crampon death that has descended on my G22’s front points. The mountain was essentially an uber-file, stripping off loads of metal from the front points and leaving a dull, rounded edge in its place.
I cringe. Folding up the crampons, I look at Nico as we both move towards the shale ridge above. What ensues is an exercise in levitation, perhaps channeling some light thoughts of the monks who populate the nearby monasteries…
“Maybe mantle off of that gravel…”
I point vaguely towards a pile of sharp shale blocks as Nico traverses a very loose terrace.
Nico passes me and looks up. We have 3 bulges to pass over before the top. Snow starts falling. As we progress, large blocks continue to shift unnervingly underfoot. I try to adhere to my policy of never putting both feet on the same stone.
With little fanfare, we arrive at the top. Minya Konka is completely hidden by clouds and Lamo She barely peaks out from the storm clouds rolling our direction.
“I don’t think anyone has ever climbed this mountain, bro.”
Nico looks indifferently out at the storm as he fishes in his backpack for some crackers. His thick mountain beard now has a nice coating of ice and snow. “It’s so shitty that I don’t think anyone WOULD want to climb it.”
“Yeah…”
I plop down on the choss beside him and pull out a roll of Oreos and pass them to Nico.
“What is the name of this mountain?” He asks.
“Ha! Right. I’m sure no one ever bothered to name this junk.” I reply, slightly amused.
Nico stares down at the Oreos and ponders for a moment.
“… Oreo… Oreo Mountain…”
“Mount... Choss... UBER-choss...”
“No. Oreos. MOUNT OREO.”
Climbing what we thought would be awesome Chinese alpine, but turned out to be a pile of shale choss scariness crap.
We both don our puffies and stare out into space for a while, conflicted between the feeling of a stepping out on an adventure tempered by the thought of all the choss we would have to reverse to get down. We glumly stared over at the sharper ridgeline we had also seen from the road. Like our gully, the others looked just like a bunch of steep, loose snow plastered over steep, loose rock. Uninspiring.
“New rule,” I say, staring blankly across the gap to the other couloirs. “If it looks like choss from a distance, it probably will be choss up close…”
“Yeah… let’s GTFO, eh?”
“Yeah.”
With that, we begin the descent, picking our way down the shale mess towards a rock ridge leading to a grassy hillside to basecamp. Reversing steep choss is like stepping on lazy but angry snapping turtles: slow to move, but unpredictable. A shift in balance may feel good for a moment, before suddenly you find yourself just about to eat it into a pile of sharp teeth and/or sharpened, pointy shale flakes. Thankfully, the exposure was not too palpable until the very end, where Nico and I had to reverse a short, narrow step to regain the dumpy snow gully we climbed earlier. Rather than descend the crap, we opted to scramble down the increasingly blunt ridge to the NW and descend the high-altitude grassy meadows below back to base camp.
By the time we bushwhacked a bit at the bottom of the descent, Nico could finally feel his toes. With little motivation to explore the other, equally loose, crappy ridgeline, we pack up camp, excited to fire up the car and its meager heater.
Reversing our walk out to the car took a bit longer than expected. We thought we would cut the descent time by taking a more direct line back to the roadcut, but failed to remember that the whole reason we went the long way in the first place was because of an entire hillside of stunted trees. Nico and I spent the better part of an hour thrashing through claw-like branches that would snag on every piece of gear we strapped to our largely overloaded alpine-sized packs.
A little disappointed with the results, we arrived back at the mud-slathered van. The extra layer of mud lent itself to the car's name… “The Little Sea Lion.”
Haphazardly heaving our stuff in back, we drove back to Kangding, where we spent our time pilfering free wi-fi at Dico’s fried chicken ("dee-coes" or "dick-os" depending on how much you loathe greasy think Taiwanese KFC in Mainland China) as we plotted our next move. Considering the cold weather at 5000m, we resolved that we should just give in and temporarily suspend our dirtbag instincts to pay for access to ice climb in Shuangqiaogou.
Some Thoughts about Life on the Road in China
- Have an extra warm blanket for each van occupant
o Sichuan mountain road temps, especially as you pass through the higher mountain towns can easily drop to -15C to -20C overnight. Usually, the small space of a van and 2 people can help keep things a bit warmer, but you often have to crack a few windows to prevent them from icing over completely overnight. The downside, of course, is that the van becomes less efficient at retaining heat. Obviously, ridiculous coldness inside the van ensues. Though we do have warm sleeping bags, things are extra comfy-cozy with a warm blanket and a hot water bottle inside our sleeping bags.
- Secure valuable/fragile items to sturdy objects in the car
o Roads often suck in the mountains in China. We have spent a large amount of time dropping into potholes on unpaved, crazy construction roads. Consequently, the awesome bar speaker I got on special to replace the crap sound system built into the car now needs replacing after 2/3 of the speakers died simply from the constant barrage of bouncing it goes through on a daily basis.
- Buy multiple air fresheners for the car
o Dirtbags obviously don’t mind the stench of greatness, but if you want to give lifts to some of your friends, consider keeping something in the car for faux-freshness. Even one of my dirtbag climber friends commented on the wafting scent to climbers and rancid socks when he piled into the car with some of our co-workers on a recent job… though he may have meant it as a compliment? Air fresheners also become incredibly less smelly once they freeze, and after they thaw, they never seem to be the same…
- Consider hauling a back-up fuel can.
o A few liters of fuel can be a lifesaver. Intervals between gas stations out in western China get further and further apart. I find myself even opting to fill up when I pass a gas station with a half tank or more, just because I do not know how far it is to a village or town big enough to have a gas station. As the crew works its way further out to locations like Ganzi, Jarjinjiabo/Cuopu Lake, and Keketuohai, items like a spare gas can—probably a few liters in size to make a final push to a town—will be mandatory to avoid an unnecessary, pre-climb epic.
- Spooning becomes a thing
o Whether intentional or something done while actually asleep, spooning happens with your climbing partner. Sichuan at high elevations is ridiculously cold. The body heat from 2 people can be the difference from sleeping all night and not sleeping a wink.
- Have fun. You’re on an amazing dirtbag odyssey
o Whether climbing a splitter sandstone/granite crack or scrambling over shale choss, if you elect to come to China for the sake of climbing and living in a van to facilitate that climbing, you are doing something that very few people in the world have done. Embrace that intrepid spirit, damnit. It will, at times, involve more exploration and a little less climbing, but there is still LOTS of climbing out here to be discovered.
Time to head for the granite peaks of Ganzi. One of the expat climbing pros said that he and some folks have referred to it as “a Chinese Patagonia” of sorts. We hope that it’s true!!!
The classic view on the way to Shuangqiaogou: 幺妹峰／Yāomèifēng, the most famous of the 四姑娘/Siguniang/Four Sisters peaks. This mountain is actually one valley to the east of Shuangqiaogou.
双桥沟 (Shuāngqiáogōu) Valley: Endure the 麻烦. Climb Glorious Ice.
A musing by: Ryder Stroud
with contributions from Nico Cáceres
January 2014
It will be jarring (initially). But it will be glorious.
That would be a fairly succinct description of what ice climbing in China’s famous Siguniang National Park. For all of you in Westphalia who have an idea of national parks with camping an unhindered access to your favorite climbing crags, things are a bit different here on the Chinese side of the Pacific.
But before we dive into the nitty-gritty of actually organizing an ice climbing trip out to Shuangqiaogou, let’s talk ice.
The Ice
A view from the back of the valley in Shuangqiaogou. Peaks over multipitch ice.
Before I get started, DOWNLOAD THE SHUANGQIAOGOU ICE CLIMBING GUIDEBOOK HERE.
First, there’s a lot.
Second, it’s long.
Third, they are under mountains. Large mountains… in the realm of 5000-6000m+.
Where is it all? It is about a 250km drive from the provincial capital, Chengdu. Though the distance is not all that far, driving in this region of china always takes far more time than you originally plan. Chengdu is essentially an scaled-up version of Denver in the sense that it sits on a huge, flat plane that extends to the east. To the west is a massive escarpment of mountains, but instead of topping out in the realm of 4000m, these peaks reach as high as 7500m (the famed Gongga Shan/Minya Konka). Consequently, the roads are often narrow and under construction, needing repair from the constant landslides, waterfall, and occasional earthquakes that define the region.
But about the ice itself.
Virtually all of the valley’s ice forms at low elevations, but “low” is being used comparatively, here. With peaks averaging 5000-6000 meters, the valley itself sits anywhere from 3300-3700 meters, meaning that those folks of the ice persuasion arriving from the lowlands (I’m looking at my home ice folk in New Hampshire), will probably need to take altitude into consideration when trying to crank out some steep ice.
One of the peaks towards the back of Shuangqiaogou. The upper peak was plastered with snow.
Strangely, the ice does not usually form up high. The winters in the area are known to be dry, so the ice actually begins forming in the late fall. But unlike the ice that forms in many places around the United States, the ice is often not accompanied by large amounts of snowfall. Instead, Shuangqiao is often bone dry in the winter, with most of the active water becoming locked up in the ice routes that line the valley. Instead, you get dry grassland (dotted with yaks) with easy access up the valley hills to the base of the climbing.
Being the center of Chinese climbing, Shuangqiaogou is already heavily developed with ice routes. There are about 30 routes in the valley and the vast majority of them are multipitch. There’s even a guidebook for ice climbing in the valley available for free download (don’t get used to free things in China, by the way).
The same peak from a distance 2 weeks later. Very dry
The nice thing about the valley is that there is something for everyone: moderate (but still long) WI3 lines to pumpy, steep WI6; again, most of them are a MULTIPITCH awesomeness. A small but active group of local and foreign climbers have even been putting up some mixed and drytooling routes in one section of the valley called the Fairy Cave.
Essentially, the ice here is a great place to learn and improve your skills on multpitch ice. The approaches are often mellow up dirt and, sometimes, scree to the base of the routes. If the need arises, bailing is often manageable, as the routes often stay below the treeline, allowing a few Scottish-style turf sticks to reach a belay or rappel tree.
The typical ice climbing environment in Shuangqiaogou: bone-dry with no snow. Just rock and ice.
If you get the hunger for alpine, look in the back of the valley. All the peaks in the front half of the valley are shale, but those in the back half—and extending into the neighboring valley of Changpingou （昌平沟） (home of the famous Four Sisters massif) are GRANITE.
However, with all of this ice paradise surrounding you, there is a price to pay. Chinese national parks have become monetized destinations for both the corporate tourism groups who run them and the locals whose roots in the valley go back for generations.
Check out below to see some of the route highlights from our travels around Shuangqiaogou.
Life in Shuangqiaogou
Van life at ~4100 meters
Eat. Sleep. Ice climb. Repeat.
So far, we have hit up some of the more moderate ice falls in the valley. Being predominantly rock climbers, Nico and I have not been on ice in about a year. All things considered, we still have pushed ourselves into some challenging situations. Nico was the first to bag a WI4 pitch, climbing a wet, mushroomy pitch close to our hostel. I later followed up with a crux pitch of a four-pitch multipitch called Ginseng Plate further in the valley. Of course, we have played around on many moderate multipitches. We have even squeezed in a bit of mixed and drytooling, though we are now paying for it in the form of blunt crampons that need daily sharpening…
Nico comes up the crux pitch of 人参果坪/Rénshēnguǒpíng/Ginseng Plate (WI4, 4 pitches)
The climbs are, for the most part, a bit dry. Talking with the local guides, it looks like this winter has been unusually dry. Many ice climbs on the west side of the valley are not fully formed, and a few on the east side require a little bit of mixed climbing to access the good ice; that was the case with Ginseng Plate. But our time here so far has been a good session in improving our ice efficiency on carious ice types. We have gone up everything from slushy, mushy ice over rock to steep curtains to bullet-hard alpine ice.
The peaks above the valley, which were fairly snowy when I visited a week and a half before this climbing trip, are now virtually stripped clean of snow, except their permanent/long-term snowfields. Potentially good for alpine rock?
Apparently, the snowy season is early spring, when the “mini-monsoon” cycle begins to kick in. What falls as rain in the Chengdu Basin to the east falls as heavy snow in the mountains to the west.
So far, we have been living in the van at the hostel—we paid a refundable 1000RMB deposit to drive the car in. We ended up staying the second of the big hostels （王幺客栈） in the only town in the valley (see info below) and have thoroughly enjoyed hanging our with our hostel. The host of the hostel is a zany Sichuanese man who enjoys talking in an outrageous voice when speaking Mandarin; his native language is a regional dialect of Sichuan Chinese (often called 四川话/Sìchānhuà that is often mostly unintelligible for students of Chinese). He will often break out into random song and accost you to say something unintelligible in his native tongue. Of course, he seems to mean it all in jest, as he, his wife, and his daughter have been nothing but kind to me and Nico.
If you’re interested in heading out to this part of the world to climb ice, read on below to find out a little on the logistics of getting to and staying in Shuangqiaogou.
The Costs and the Paperwork
The landscape between Kangding and Shuangqiaogou: Tibetan-flavored without all of the harassment that comes with being a foreigner in actual Tibet...
Getting to Shuangqiaogou （双桥沟）is probably the cheaper item on this list. From Chengdu （成都）, you need to get to Rilong, the nearest large town to the Shuangqiaogou valley. Any of thte major bus stations in Chengdu will probably have a bus or large van departing for Rilong （日龙）, since it is a fairly big tourist destination; however in winter, these may be less frequent since most of the valley’s visitors are ice climbers, of which China has few.
Before you depart, make sure you have plenty of cash, as there is no way to obtain any without leaving the valley once you enter. If you ever leave the park and want to re-enter, you have to buy another ticket. Yay, China!
The ride itself is 5-6 hours depending on the road conditions and the relative insanity of your Chinese driver: after the first hour from Chengdu, the road turns to mud and rock as it passes through a 25km construction zone in a huge mountain gorge. Apparently, they are building a huge hydroelectric plant to feed the needs of Chengdu and the surrounding cities like Ya’an （雅安）.
When you get to the entrance gate, you will need to whip out your (currently fat) wallet and prepare yourself to sign some waivers. Ironically, liability law is something that is a relative joke in China. Activities like gym climbing require no waivers; China isn’t litigation trigger-happy like we Americans are... Yet Shuangqiaogou is one of the few places where the officials make you sign waivers and indicate that you have some form of insurance. Fair enough, when you consider that any accident in this area of China is fairly high-profile, given that the whole of Siguniang National Park (which contains Shuanqiaogou) is among China’s most famous.
At the gate, you will pay 220 RMB for an entrance ticket and ice climbing privileges for 3 days. You can also buy a multi-use (2x) bus ticket for 70 RMB. Once those ice climbing privileges expire, it is an additional 30 RMB per day of ice climbing. There is a possibility in the winter of driving a private car in, but you are required to park and leave it at your hostel. You also have to shell out a 1000RMB deposit that you will get back at the end of your trip, provided you don’t try to drive your car further into the park.
Once inside the park, you have two primary options for lodging: Five-Color Peak Guesthouse or the Yaomei Hostel. There are a few other options in the town if these two are full, but these two hostels have the best accommodations and are the most popular with ice climbers, so they are both great options if you are looking to meet Chinese and foreign climbers alike.
Prices range from 70RMB-100RMB per person per night. The final price will depend on your negotiating skills and how busy they are when you arrive. Meals cost 15-30RMB per person per night depending on the meal.
If you want a ride from hostel owners to you destination, it is 100RMB for the day, and they will pick you up at the end of the day, too. This option is, in the long run, more expensive than the bus, but the buses are infrequent and lazy during the winter season; the lack of tourists and the little prospect of large profits means the bus drivers often show up 30 minutes to 1 hour later than an agreed time you arrange with them by phone. They also stop running by 4:45pm in the winter, meaning that if you are late coming off a big multipitch, you might have to huff it 20km+ out of the valley and back to your hostel. And honestly, why not give your local hostel owner the business anyway?
All in all, be prepared to spend 1000RMB-1500RMB per person for a week in Shuangqiaogou, provided you are climbing independently without a guide. If you are in from the States on an ice climbing vacation, this will be absurdly cheap and you will be in Heaven. For dirtbag climbers, you will still probably grumble.
There are a few other miscellaneous expenses that you may or may not encounter during your travels in the valley. If you want a local guide, that will set you back 300-400RMB per day. That being said, I am assuming those of you wanting to make the jump across the Pacific for ice climbing will want to venture out on your own. If you decide to walk further into the park past the second entrance gate, you will have to register and pay a 500RMB refundable “smoking deposit.” Though most of us Western climbers don’t smoke, it is far more prevalent among Chinese climbers; in the valley, it won’t be uncommon to see some local guides sipping Baijiu (think Chinese Tequila but worse-tasting) and dragging on a cigarette after a day of climbing with clients. Ergo, the smoking deposit is really meant to discourage local climbers from chucking out there used butts and, potentially, starting a fire on the dry valley floor.
To keep it simple, here’s a quick reference of the costs of ice climbing in the valley.
Money conversion: 1 USD = 6.2 RMB
- Entry ticket + 3 days of ice climbing privilege: 220 RMB
- Bus Ticket: 70 RMB for 2 round trip fares
- Additional days of climbing privileges: 30 RMB per day
- Hostel prices: 70-100 RMB per night
- In-house meals: 15-30 RMB per meal
- Hiring a ride from hostel owners or their friends: 100 RMB (can be split between the number of people riding in the van)
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- Optional private vehicle entry deposit: 1000 RMB (refundable when you leave with receipt)
- Independent entry (i.e. without locals or guides) 'no smoking' deposit: 500 RMB (refundable when you leave with receipt)
- Local guide services: 300-400 RMB per day
With all of these fees and documents you have to sign, you might feel a bit daft if you want to jump through all of these hoops just to ice climb. It may seem, initially, as madness. But there may be a reason to all of the madness. If you care to read on, you can find some thoughts on the nature of Chinese national parks.
Thoughts on the Nature of Shuangqiaogou and Chinese National Parks
First, the 麻烦／máfàn.
Oh, the mafan.
One of the ads for one of the many hotels in the area. Apparently, chess can be a selling point for your hotel.
It is a word that foreigners become all too accustomed to when living in China. For those of you new to the Chinese language, “mafan” is a term that encompasses all sorts of arbitrary barriers and annoyances that seem to dog foreigners wherever they go. Whether its gtting registration papers for a car or entering Shuangqiogou for ice climbing, the mafan follows you in China. It is a fact of life here, yet it should not dissuade those of you looking to come over here for the first time. Oftentimes, you make a Chinese friend who can lend a hand, and, to be honest, you develop a life skill; we Westerners are often far too polite when dealing with items like prices and bills. Dealing with mafan in China will hone your skills and negotiating and break down your hesitation to push for exactly what you want in a run-of-the-mill business transaction.
But what does this mean for Shuangqiaogou?
The mafan is unavoidable. But again, in China it is a fact of life. And it manifests itself in a very uncomfortable way for those of us used to unhindered access to our favorite climbing areas back home.
For us, national parks are a common good. Though they are, in reality, paid for by our tax dollars behind-the-scenes, national parks are something recognized in the US as something for everyone, and therefore it should not have burdens that might limit access for some of the populace.
What’s at the core of all this? Ultimately, it is an ideal. As Americans (or Western folk, for that matter), we look at a common good like a national park and see its beauty as something that possesses inherent value; the value of nature is something that the US as a country has come to protect. Of course, it was not always easy. The value of nature was something that was argued in the court system all the ay up to the Supreme Court in the 80s and 90s (for example, the court case ordering Los Angeles to rewater Mono Lake in Eastern California after partly draining the lake to feed its voracious growth needs).
However the current standard, by and large, recognizes wilderness areas as something that may be preserved for the enjoyment of the people who use it. We recognize places like Yosemite or Mount Rainier National Park as something that should not be directly profited from. That being said, there are exceptions. Private concessioners like the famed Ahwahnee Lodge in Yosemite is a for-profit enterprise within the park, and Yosemite itself has been heavily developed to accommodate the millions of tourists who pass through every year. But the development within national parks in the US often falls within a context of conservation: develop the park for use and enjoyment by people, yet at the same time make a conscious and practical effort to have that development co-exist and have a lesser impact on the nature that surrounds it. it is for that reason, places like Inyo National Forest in California issue wag bags and stipulate that waste has to be packed out and disposed of at the trailhead. Equivalent efforts do not really exist on this side of the Pacific. Signs that are put up telling visitors not to litter in Chinese national parks are laughably ineffective; oftentimes, there will be many articles of garbage right next to the sign...
With China, the profit motive gets put on steroids, in a sense, and the development comes first—far before any consideration for the consequences posed to the natural environment around it. As far as I have seen, there is no real ideal in China that recognizes the inherent value and beauty of wild places. I am sure that, if you dig deep enough, you can find some examples in Chinese literature that espouse nature’s beauty, but in practice, it looks like the Chinese development model for national parks is one of profit and monetization.
And this development model bears out in how parks are developed. They are often run by corporate tourism groups who contract out to builders and locals to make the park suitable for the average Chinese tourist. What does that model look like in practice? Hotels and guesthouses are everywhere; paved roads are the predominant way to get to a destination within the area; “trails” are more akin to boardwalks and concrete paths, with routes up mountains and hillsides bearing stone paths and steps all the way to the top.
The popularized image of Getu and its landmark cave. Petzl Roctrip established routes here in 2011.
Americans/Westerners might experience a revulsion at first: all of this mafan, all of these pay barriers, all of the construction, the garbage the litters many of China’s hiking trails. It seems to be the complete opposite of everything we hold dear about national parks. Some might assume that it is a function of the age of China’s parks system. It has existed as a formal institution only since 1982 when Zhángjiājiē/张家界 became the country’s first national park. But it does not seem that, with the opening of new parks, that the folks charged with national park development have acted precipitously. Hotels continue to be built, poor infrastructure continues to persist, and concrete flows into parks like water. More and more natural areas—Getu, Shuangqiaogou, Cangshan, Wanxianshan—are starting to sport an aesthetic more akin to an amusement park more than a national park.
Getu in 2013. Concrete paths and excavation cut through the cave.
I could rant on and on about what we might think of as the ‘gross injustices’ that are being inflicted on the environment in China, but there is another interesting side to this whole development process. To our sensibilities, destroying all of this natural environment feels like a violation of everything we have come to value about national parks. But that is just the point, these are just values: intangible items that inherently have no value unless we assign them value through a bizarrely complex and oftentimes inconsistent set of thoughts that somehow miraculously hold themselves together in some sort of a coherent argument.
It is that abstract nature that makes it ridiculous to impose on the Chinese development model. From the Chinese perspective (of course, take this with a grain of salt since I am, too, an outsider), it is about time to make practical gains from beautiful places like Shuangqiaogou.
The zeitgeist in China is one of high times: the economy is booming—especially compared to the sluggish American economy—and there are more people than ever in China who possess disposable income. That extra money is fair game for those who can attract that money.
Emblematic of what is going on in Chinese national parks: a glass elevator built in Getu.
The folks in Shuangqiaogou and other Chinese national parks alike know that there is a vast amount of money to be made in tourism attracting all of this new disposable income. The locals are not going to waste their time agonizing over abstract concepts of the inherent value of nature. They have a very real chance to improve their historically low incomes (since national parks are often out in rural places) by catering to this new demographic of people.
So, you might think that this motivation is horrible: wantonly wrecking natural areas in order to make a profit. We oftentimes look at situations like this one and villainize the profit motive, especially at nature’s expense.
But there is a flip-side to that argument, and it may seem cras at first: WHY NOT?
These locals—and to a lesser extent the individuals who populate the tourism groups that run the park—have a chance that their parents and grandparents did not.
Let’s take a step back and look at a comparative context back in time. First, go back to the early 20th century. When Teddy Roosevelt was popularizing the idea of national parks and taking his “rough rider” pictures atop the cliffs of Yosemite with his cowboy hat, China was in the throes of political turmoil; the dynastic system was collapsing and the whole country was turning into an anarchy run by warlords.
In the 50s, when times were good in post-war America and people had the means to travel to Yosemite and other national parks, millions of Chinese were dying from starvation and revolutionary reactionism during Mao’s Great Leap Forward and, later, the Cultural Revolution.
In the 80s, when we were arguing in a civilized courtroom over whether the Great Spotted Owl is worth protecting from deforestation and possible extinction, China was just stepping out into the brave new world of a globalized economy. Conservation and natural beautywas likely not on the minds of many when the prospect of life then was one finally without the fear of Communist extremism no longer lording over the heads of many.
You might ask: “So what? Where does this leave us in our Shuangqiaogou conversation?”
Shuangqiaogou, like all of the Chinese national parks opening up to Chinese and foreign tourists alike are the product of their times. They are an asset to people who have not historically had such an opportunity to make money. They are also an asset to the people who patronize them. Many Chinese have not historically had the money to go on holiday, especially deep into what were once inaccessible wild regions within the country.
The opportunity is there for all parties. Why would—or should—they stop developing national parks in the name of some abstract idea of conservation imported by a bunch of idealistic foreigners? There is a practicality--even if purely profit-driven--in all of this change in China's national parks. It may be a disappointment to us, but to be disappointed with it will rob us of the ability to enjoy the still-wild parts of these parks and the still-wild parts of China, of which there is still a lot.
Granted, there is a rising sense of urgency in recent years about the state of China’s environment, but that is a can of worms we will save for another time.
Ultimately, the story ends with China doing what China does. Academics in all fields have tried to explain its behaviors with paradigms that cater to our Western sensibilities. You can be indignant or incredulous with the ludicrous development that goes on in Chinese parks, or you can go to them and seek out our own adventure. It is still there, you just have to venture a little further off the beaten, often concrete, path to find it.
Stay tuned for our adventures further west towards 甘孜 (Gānzē). We are hoping to hit up a valley between Kawarani (5992m) and Chola Shan 1 (6162m). Rumor has it that there are granite peaks 5000m-6000m that have plenty of untapped routes!
Peace and good climbing.
Ryder and Nico
Haba Xueshan: Route Beta!
We have just posted the most up-to-date information on the Normal Route for Haba. Click on the image below or follow this link to read up on the route. We also have plenty of new info on places to stay and all of the prices for services and accommodations while in the Haba region!
Haba Xueshan （哈巴雪山 || 5396m/17807 ft.) Expedition 2014
Haba Xueshan forms the northern wall of China's famous Tiger Leaping Gorge along with Jade Dragon Mountain to the south. This trip was one of two high peak trips I led in the area in October. Haba is one of the first truly high peaks in China when coming from the east and is constantly enveloped in enormous clouds. Our trip was lucky enough to have visibility over 100 miles out to the Tibetan border!