Mudslide Season at Tiger Leaping Gorge

From Yading, it was back to Daocheng, then another ten hour bus ride to the tourist town of Shangrila, and then to Qiaotou. Qiaotou is the starting point for hiking Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the world's deepest gorges.

I'd been hearing stories about Tiger Leaping Gorge from other travellers since I'd arrived in Chengdu and while travelling through Sichuan and Yunnan. The peaks of the mountains on either side of the gorge hover as high as 5000m above the Jinsha River. The hiking trail itself is thousands of meters above the river along the side of the mountain. At times, the trail is only a couple meters wide, with a sheer cliff to one side dropping thousands of meters below.

Additionally, it was mudslide season. It has been a year of record rainfall here in China, with major flooding in a number of provinces and water levels at historic highs. Earlier this summer, Yunnan had been swamped with rainstorms. As a result, many of the roads we had been traveling had been obstructed with debris or blocked by some kind of mudslide despite Chinese conctruction crews working continuously to clear the roads.

The hiking trails of Tiger Leaping Gorge would be muddy and in disrepair at the very least, and I had heard stories of people having to precariously climb over mudslide debris thousands of meters above the river.

Furthermore, the leader of our group and chief navigator had already trekked through Tiger Leaping Gorge before and would be staying behind.

The plan was to set off early on day 1 and arrive at Halfway Lodge, a guest house about halfway through the trek, in the early evening. We would stay there for the night and then complete the trek on day 2, returning to Qiaotou by car to rejoin our friend. Easy... What could go wrong?

We arrived in Qiaotou an hour ahead of schedule and almost immediately got ourselves lost. We missed the cutoff point for the hiking trail and hiked for hours along a mountain path through the mud being harrassed by insects. You would think that the biggest gorge in the world would be an easiest enough landmark to follow, but apparently we really are that clueless. After wandering around and backtracking for what seemed like ages, we finally hired a local guy we ran into for 20 yuan to lead us back to the main trail. When we arrived at the Naxi's guest house, which we were supposed to have arrived at 11:30AM, it was already 4:30PM!

Already exhausted, but not wanting to fall too far behind schedule, we journeyed onward. We took on the treacherous 24 bend trail to the top of the hiking trail, where we once again foolishly declined to ride a horse to the top. By the time we reached Tea Horse guest house to retire for the evening, still a couple hours behind schedule, we had hiked a total of 9 hours through the mud and at high altitude.

Looking back, I suppose the views at times were pretty spectacular, but at the time I couldn't care less as I was so exhausted. Thank goodness for the Tea Horse guest house. I was expecting the worst, but they had hot showers, a clean room, and even a massage parlor. I guess those are some of the perks of a place becoming "too touristic", as my friends would say. I got a massage at the guest house and collapsed into bed. If I can take anything of value away from the day 1 experience, it was the best night's sleep I have ever had.

Day 2 started off uneventfully enough. We set off early and hiked the well defined trail at a steady pace, stopping at Halfway Lodge to check out the "world's most scenic toilet". After the Halfway Lodge, the trail narrowed at times and the cliffs got more and more dramatic. We ran into a herd of goats at one of the particularly narrow points of the trail, but they didn't seem too affected by the heights. The views were indeed amazing, though to be honest, I preferred the scenery at the Longji rice terraces and at Yading Nature Reserve. We finished the hike with plenty of time to catch a car back to Qiaotou.

Little did we know that the ride back to Qiaotou would be even more treacherous than the hike itself. The road was littered with debris from the mudslides and was completely blocked off at two points. We would have to take one shuttle to the first mudslide, somehow cross the blocked off road on foot, then board the next shuttle, and so on.


Climbing along the side of a steep and muddy cliff with an avalanche of loose debris ready to fall down on you at any minute is not something I do on a regular basis back in Irvine. But it's amazing the things you are willing to do without hesitation once you are out in the world and filled with the spirit of adventure.


We traversed the mudslides without incident and returned safely to Qiaotou to hop on yet another minibus to the next town.