In growing shadows thrown by late afternoon sunshine, we climbed ever upwards, beyond the new bricks laid on the Great Wall of China, far up the Tiger Wall constructed from odd-coloured remnant stones on Huangyaguan’s western mountain and almost engulfed from both sides by hungry jungle foliage. Humidity sapped our energy and set our hearts pounding as we endured the endless staircase.
Still, the full contingent of walkers representing South Australian childhood cancer charity, The McDermott McGuinness Foundation, made it to the high mountain plateau —and then scaled further still, up a trail usually taken only by villagers harvesting wild herbs, until we stood on an exposed, broken pile of rubble that we suddenly realized was the tip of the ancient wall, with a whole region of wild China sprawled before us in every direction.
This was the profound moment that defined our challenge, bringing a heady rush of euphoria and poignancy. Our group shared embraces, long silences and some tears as most remembered precious people now lost to us — many having been taken by cancer. In the stillness of such an awesome panorama, it reaffirmed how precious life is.
The 2009 McDermott M
cGuinness Foundation challenge to walk sections of the Great Wall of China was not as arduous as previous foundation ventures — conquering the Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea and the Sandakan Death March in the Borneo jungle — but it presented complex and significant challenges to its 31 participants on two trips through June and July.
Beyond raising funds for childhood cancer research, we had to be physically ready for more than 110,000 vertical steps, and be culturally prepared to embrace the language, cuisine and customs of a land where we were most definitely the aliens.
The wall presented a fresh challenge every day, as we encountered nine sections — each with significantly different personalities — through six consecutive days of walking. There was the peculiar spectacle of a rebuilt section of wall jutting into the Yellow Sea at Laolongtou and a reconstructed city within the former garrison at Shanhaiguan Pass — the formidable First Pass Under Heaven — awaiting an initial hoard of tourists to fill its new, stylized accommodation.
We trudged through sheet rain at 
Jiaoshan, the first rugged mountain peak we encountered about 20km north west of the Shanhaiguan Pass. We saw the wall descend into the Panjaikou reservoir (created for hydro electricity in 1975) and emerge to climb the opposite ridges, scaling dizzy heights that dropped sharply into sparkling azure waters.
We scaled the eastern flank of the Huangyaguan wall at dawn (4.50 am), observing the strategic mastery of how it formed an impenetrable barrier across the stark, jagged mountainside created by extreme geological events.
Then there was the heat — a punishing opponent that roasted us slowly during our longest trek from Jinshanling to Simatai, even though local Mongol farmers were already at the highest of 57 towers we passed through, perched under umbrellas offering to sell us cold beer and engraved medallions.
As we learned about the wall, China revealed itself — and also we learned about ourselves, as the spirit of support swelled and friendships grew among our unlikely tour family that spanned five age groups, from live-wire grandmothers to teenagers.
Most were daunted by the physical challenge of scaling peaks, ladders and negotiating skinny, crumbling paths — though none shirked the task or complained.
“I wouldn’t have believed I could do all this,” said Deb Hanley, taking part in her first adventure trek. “I’m feeling pretty good about myself.”
For others, the challenge was leaving accustomed comforts behind. Gordana Kleut, a former model, had the taunts of her teenage children ringing in her ears, insisting that she not “behave like a princess” on the journey. Hauling her pack to the summit, sweating with the rest of the team, she flashed a contented smile. “No princesses up here,” she declared proudly.
What we achieved only beca
me apparent once the challenge had been completed. Returning from the Simatai summit, after six hours of walking the wall in 38 c heat, we encountered a group of young Americans who had alighted a chairlift from the car park directly below and were labouring a short distance to the mountain peak.
They asked where we had come from. I looked to the distant horizon and the long crooked stone spine with its knobbly watchtowers stretching far away from us. “About double the distance of the furthest point you can see,” was my reply — not as a boast, but more a marvellous realization.
“This is the ninth section of the wall that we’ve walked during the past six days.” They looked at us in disbelief. “That’s incredible,” they exclaimed. And they were right — we had experienced an incredible week that will live in our memories forever.
The Great Wall 
is such a complex riddle to understand, due to the complexity of four separate and quite disjointed sections of walls built over 1800 years by four separate dynasties — the Qin, Han, Wei and Ming — across 6700km of violently jutting mountain peaks and sweeping desert plains spanning China.
While some decayed earthen sections of the first walls date from 220BC, the familiar sections of stone and brick reinforced walls in the steep mountains north of Beijing are the legacy of the last of the wall building rulers, the Ming Dynasty, which were completed in 1572 — not as ancient as many presume, as Elizabeth I was then on the throne in England and the Renaissance in full bloom in Italy.
Even as the youngest section of the wall, this area had fallen into such terrible disrepair that what tourists see now in the popular visited sections has been largely rebuilt since 1984.
Problems stemmed from bombing during the Sino-Japanese War and then the Chinese Civil War through the 1930s and 1940s, when ramparts were detonated to scavenge masonry for building roads and reservoirs, then picked over by local looters seeking building materials. In truth, this decay has occurred since the walls ceased to be a strategic defensive barrier after the fall of the Ming Dynasty in 1664.
For generations, most Chinese vie
wed the walls in unsentimental terms, as an ancient stone spine across the landscape. However, now there is a rush to rejuvenate the wall — particularly in quiet rural domains — due to its lucrative tourism appeal. In some places, the Great Wall now has the look and feel of a theme park, while areas of the wild wall in more remote rural areas have you stepping over workmen placing new grey stone tiles over the ancient rubble to make an easier path for western visitors.
As the rush accelerates to make more of the wall easily accessible to more tourists, one wonders what type of historical monument visitors to the Great Wall will find in another 10 years time.
Photo Credits
All photos by David Sly
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Are there plans for thischarity walk to be done again, I’m interested. My husband died of mesothelioma and whilst I was devasted he was adamant that it was never to be compared to the many children who have any form of cancer and how this affects their lives and that of their parents. I look forward to your reply. DD