Yang and I are driving along a small, paved, road in the hillsides of Hebei Province and looking for a trailhead for Haituo Mountain. To our right out in a field is a farmer working his field. Up ahead on our left walking down the road is a farmer making her way. They look old, really old, which makes them about our age. Yang leans out the window and asks the farmer where the mountain is. His reply is a quizzical “Mountain? Everywhere is mountain.”
It turned out after one u-turn and a trek up an unpaved trail we reached the unmarked trailhead. Putting on all the clothes we had – which was just light jackets and sweats – we headed out. After a mile or so it became a real trail and not so much of a fire road. There was nobody around as we made our way up the mountain. The small signs of human life we saw were limited to small bits of litter alongside the trail.
Once upon a time I used to hike a fair amount but not so much now so when Yang offered to go last week I jumped at the chance. The trick is where to go as the popular hills have lots of people and paved trails which isn’t as much fun. So I searched the web and didn’t find much. Eventually I stumbled on an English language article in the China Daily warning would be hikers about the pitfalls hikers recently ran into in the mountains around Beijing. One of these mountains – Haituo Mountain – looked interested and a little more research revealed it to be the second highest peak in the area at about 7500 feet. The peak supposedly is not a peak in the traditional sense but levels out into more of a meadow. I say supposedly because we didn’t actually make it near the peak. After about an half hour walking Yang was pretty bored and an hour into it it seemed she might fall asleep while making the ascent. So we walked a bit more and then turned around. It would have been nice to do some kind of hiking loop but we lacked any kind of trail map, just hiked up and down.
We got back in the car for the two hour drive home that with traffic turned into three hours. One thing that stood out on the drive – especially on the drive there when we stopped multiple times for directions – is that travelling to the farmlands is like time travelling. The drive might have only taken a couple of hours but the people we see, especially the adults, do and act as you might have imagined a hundred of years ago. Small hoes to plow the fields, simple dress, skin worn like leather. Yang tells a story of the parents of a friend of hers who live in a similar place to the land we were seeing. One of their crops is peanuts and for about five dollars a day they could use a machine to harvest. They choose to save the $5 and do it by hand.
When we crossed into the Beijing municipality there were two separate police check points we had to go through. The check points were set up prior to the Olympics and remain to check for bad guys. A check of license and registration and we were on our way.