Climbing Karst in Yangshuo China

Magical views of karst towers and rice paddies

China is a crazy place. It has crazy cities, landscapes and juxtapositions of modern and ancient. It is big, busy and a sensory overload. I landed in Shanghai with Brett and Alison after having done basically no planning for this trip. We spent our first two, very jet lagged days wandering the streets of Shanghai and eating dumplings for most meals. Still exhausted, we caught a quick flight to Guilin after meeting Jon and Heather in the airport on our second night. From there, we took a van to Yangshuo, arriving in the early morning. Fortunately our driver had waited for us despite the 2 hr delay. We checked into our disappointing accommodation but promptly went to bed. That was tomorrow's issue.

The Shanghai skyline on night #1

The Oriental Pearl behind an old home

The big 3 in Shanghai

Alison and I were up at 6. I looked out the window and saw where we were. It was a breathtaking landscape of mist, rice paddies and jungle covered karst (rock formations usually of limestone, characterized by underground cave systems and above-ground towers, formed by erosion of other rock types). We spent the morning figuring out new accommodation. We had originally booked at a cheap place, Crash Pad Yangshuo, that looked like it was geared for climbers. It had an outdoor bouldering wall and a craft beer pub next door! Unfortunately, it was also geared a bit more for the long-term dirtbag type, for $7 a night we should have guessed. The place was dirty and there was going to be a shared squat toilet between 5 of us, not ideal when you are worried about how the food is going to agree with you. It did come with a kitchen and would be great for people that wanted to stay for a while, but for a 2 week stay, it wasn't for us. Instead, we checked in at the No Kidd Inn, which suited us way better. The girl at the front desk helped us out so much and we were situated much closer to the restaurants and shops of town.

The first view out the window in Yangshuo

Andrew and Kalen also checked in so all 7 of us were in the same place. We spent the 2 weeks exploring the region on rented cruiser bikes and climbing most days. The rock in Yangshuo is limestone and reminded me of the climbing in Thailand (minus the beach). It is actually formed in the same way which explains the similarities in features. There were tufas, stalactites and caves galore. One thing you did have to be careful about were the insects and snakes that liked to hang out at the crags too. The majority of the climbing was bolted sport routes and ranged from single pitch crags to various multi-pitches that topped out on the towers.

It was hot and humid. We had arrived in the monsoon season and found most of the crags deserted. We also had a few days of overnight rain and showers where we couldn't climb everywhere we wanted. Fortunately, we had a great guidebook with recommendations for rainy day crags. We made the most of the days we had and climbed in some spectacular caves and on big overhanging walls. Yangshuo is know for its hard routes, but there were also plenty of lower grades. Unfortunately with the rain, those were usually the first routes to get wet so I did a lot of top roping on hard climbs while the boys pushed it on 11's and 12's.

Riding out to the crag through the fields

The biker gang with the Wine Bottle Crag on the left

Bikes and rock walls

Misty mountains

JD climbing at The Egg

Jenny at the Egg

Jon and Kailen

Cool views from the Treasure Cave Crag

JD traversing the tufas in Treasure Cave

Brett and Andrew high above the fields at Treasure Cave

Photographer Brett

Working out the moves at Chicken Cave

When I mentioned that I hadn't done much research about this trip, I meant it. I was expecting to be in a small town in rural China. Yangshuo is actually a bustling city of 300,000 people and a main tourist destination for domestic travelers. Climbers and foreigners are by far the minority of visitors which was very evident by the amount of attention we got when we walked through town or passed by on our bikes. Chinese tourists visit Yangshuo for the beautiful Li River, the view of the karst towers, caves, various cultural programs, and the chance to spot Westerners! Large tour buses unloaded hordes of tour groups onto giant golf-cart style buses to shuttle them around town to various markets and attractions. We ended up in more than a few peoples photos. Some people would blatantly take photos of us, others would ask politely and some would be stealthy about it. We had a few younger people claim that they needed photos for their homework. Not sure what class that was for. The main strip, West Street was full of noise, lights, smells and people.

Our favourite dessert destination on West Street

Nighttime lights in Yangshuo

Backstreet Yangshuo

Downtown Yangshuo

"I need a picture for my homework?!?!" Jenny and Alison tower over tiny chinese girl

Bamboo boats on the Li River

Another main attraction for the region is Moon Hill, a massive hill with a hole right through it that you can access on a walking trail with plenty of stairs. Moon Hill had the first bolted sport routes in Yangshuo and some crazy features like bat hangs under the photogenic roof and a few 5.13's. There was some talk of access issues to the climbing, and when we arrived there were signs indicating that people did not want climbers there. Luckily we had been told by some locals that the park was just concerned about getting sued, so they put up the signs, but didn't actually care if you climbed or not. 

We got to put this theory to the test after a misunderstanding at the gate where we thought we had paid for our park entry, but did not receive any tickets. The taxi driver likely just took off with our cash. A few hours later as we were finishing up our climbing for the day, a security guard approached us. He spoke no English, we spoke no Mandarin. We were convinced we were getting a fine, but he just wanted to see our tickets. Luckily, a Chinese climber was able to translate and sort out the mess. The guy didn't care that we were climbing at all! At the end of the day, he even gave us a ride back to town (for a fee of course) and we all piled into the back of his clean car, soaking wet from a thunderstorm and muddy from climbing.

Hmm... Sign at the entrance to Moon Hill

Moon Hill arch from the top of the hiking trail

Views from under Moon Hill

Jon looking to the next bolt at Moon Hill

Andrew spider-mans up Moon Hill

Brett moving on crimps at Moon Hill

Top of Moon Hill scramble

This lady hikes up the trail every day to sell cold drinks to tourists. We couldn't say no

Navigating in China was a bit difficult. It is rare to find people who spoke English so there was a lot of figuring it out on our own or using gestures and sign language. Trying to find climbing crags adds an entire new element of difficulty to way finding. The guidebook was alternately very helpful or frustratingly misleading. Unmarked roads and trails were the norm and we often passed through tiny quiet villages and agricultural land just outside of town and away from the chaos on our way to the cliffs. I love how climbing gets you off the beaten path and into areas that you would never think to go. We definitely got lost a few times. Fortunately people were very easy going and didn't seem to mind when we ended up lost on their farm, and would often gesture in the direction of the climbing area if we showed them a picture in our guidebook. . 

In addition, all things google are blocked in China and you need a VPN to access it. I never realized how much I rely on google maps, gmail and the google search engine until I wasn't able to access it. It made navigation just that much more challenging.

Some of the approaches were a little wild. Hope we are going the right way!

Relaxing at the bottom of the crag

Topped out on Jeremy's Jiji

Great views from the top

Although the focus of the trip was on climbing, it wasn't all we did. We also ate. A lot!! The region is know for its spicy food and everything came with extra chilis. It would be hard to be a vegetarian in China as even the tofu dishes came with bits of meat (hopefully pork). We didn't go too crazy, but did try the river snails and a number of popular meat and veggie dishes, all cooked in different sauces. Our favourite foods were steamed pork buns from "steam bun alley" and mushroom dumplings from "dumpling drive". Of course we had to have dumplings at most meals too. This was not your typical North American chinese food but it was very tasty. Maybe it was all the MSG?

Colourful veggies at the market

Dinner time at our favourite chinese restaurant

Hotpot night

On one of our off days, we did a chinese cooking class and learned how to make pork dumplings, green beans with eggplant and kung pao chicken. It was super fun!

Heather and Jonathan getting stoked for cooking class

Alison's perfect dumplings

We made that!

It was a great trip, with great friends. A perfect way to celebrate a big accomplishment and our graduation! Thanks so much to Brett, Alison, Kailen, Andrew, Heather and Jonathan for being awesome travel and climbing partners and for all the great photos featured in this blog.

Rainy day walk