Hike The Tiger Leaping Gorge (Yunnan Province, China)

Starting the hike of the Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Stopped to compare skills with the locals...

and to throw down with the local all-stars.

They were no match for our superior cunning and creativity.

The suspense was palpable.

The view from the start of the gorge.

I can honestly say that I've never relieved myself with this good a view.

The courtyard of the Naxi family guesthouse where we stayed the night.

Their food was by far the best I have had in China.

They had ice cold beer too...a delicacy in China.

The morning was cold as hell, but the breakfast was delicious.

Sunrise over the Himalayas.

Between this hike and the Great Wall hike, I lost about 10 pounds.

Sweeet.

For the glory.

How this guy was able to ride that frickin donkey up the mountain was beyond me.

Jon caught in the moment.

Hard to see at first glance, but I am walking on the outer wall of a really old water supply system.

In most places, like this one, there was a straight drop of 2,000 feet to the bottom of the gorge.

These goats can climb almost vertical rock faces with ease, but here they are just being lazy.

The trail itself provided some unbelievable scenes.

Tiger Leaping Gorge...I assume.

The famous Tiger Leaping Stone is directly below us...a couple thousand feet.

Lunch was ridiculously good, and with a view to match.

Shots of ol' Jack Danny (as some Chinese call him) at the halfway point.

Carbo loading. Himalayan style.

Hooray!

An English speaking Chinese couple walked with us part of the way. They were very nice, and had some crazy good fruit that I cant remember what it was called.

The second village we stopped at, with a ho-hum view.

The waterfall was pretty, but both Ames and I came freakin close to busting ass trying to get across it.

Nearing trail's end.

The car ride back was by far the scariest part, as rock slides had washed out most of the road leaving a one lane strip of gravel between us and the bottom of the gorge. The driver was leaning over the steering wheel looking for rock slides the whole time.

We did the hike in 2 days, one night, in just our regular kicks (hurt like hell by the end). The Naxi villages along the way provided all the food we needed, save maybe for some snacks. We left our bigger bags at the start of the trail with a western lady who had lived there for ages, and whose main mode of income was holding bags for hikers.

As an aside, in what is sure to be one of the more bizarre coincidences in my life, about a year or so later I was walking around Manhattan while visiting a friend and ran into one of the women who we had dinner with that that night at the Naxi guesthouse. Never met her before, and will probably never see her again. The world is a strange place.

The Lijiang area and the gorge itself are a hell of a trip.