The Tiger’s Leap: Tiger Leaping Gorge, Part 2
We set our alarms to 6:55 to catch sunrise in the morning.
Bundled in blankets, we stand on the rooftop and watch as the sky purples down the gorge. Hazy and orange, hills in the distance gradually grow light as we sit, shifting, in the cold of our valley.
We eat breakfast and stare out at the golden sunlight far away down the gorge, then pack and begin the hike, still in the shadow of the peaks.
This story is the continuation of a series that begins here.
The second day of our hike is all flat or downhill. We skirt mule trains on narrow ledges, bypass a village, and begin our approach on the waterfalls near the trail’s end.
The Upper Trail is a hiking route, but the Lower Route of Tiger Leaping Gorge is a road full of tourist buses. The two meet at the ends. We reached the road around noon, not long after the sun finally reaches us.
A couple of kilometers down the road, we find our guesthouse, chosen for the best-reviewed food along the route. We put down our packs and sit to lunch. Ert begins to order in Mandarin as usual, but our host stops him: “I don’t speak Chinese!”
The guesthouse, aptly called Tibet Guesthouse, is an enclave of Tibetans. Our host doesn’t speak much Mandarin, but his English is good. He shows us how to eat tsambe, barley meal like a breakfast slurry in pungent yak butter tea.
He brings us local hard pears from the trees, some to eat and some to take on our hikes: one this afternoon, and one tomorrow.
We are standing at the thinnest point of the Yangtze, almost at its source. The waters roil around enormous rocks, and the rapids seethe. According to legend, this is where a tiger once leaped across– from this very rock, to the cliffs on the far side, escaping a hunter.
River currents crash into each other, sending up spray. A rock right at the thinnest point is sometimes covered in water, sometimes exposed to fifteen feet down. One eddy swirls and sinks continuously, funneling to a lower height.
We hiked here from the Tibetan Guesthouse, following a steep, overgrown path in the warm afternoon sun. Two cows and two calves grazed along the trail, their coats a clean, lovely red-brown. They stood shy in the path, waiting for us to move as we waited for them from off the trail.
Once the cows ambled on, we descended to cliffs. We stood at the middle height of the face, but someone had carved the path into the rock: an open-sided tunnel, deep enough to feel safe but not high enough for Jon or Rick to walk upright.
Where the tunnel opened out, someone had built a cage of bamboo and an iron-grilled door. Standing guard, a woman pointed to a sign: there’s a fee. Fifteen kuai per person, or five to turn around and return the way we came. It’s a scam; our passes to the park include all its features. But the local folks know that every tourist will want to see the rock where the tiger leaped. And this woman, cleverly, put us in a cage where she controlled the door. So we paid, rolling our eyes. She opened the door, and we continued our descent to the river.
After several minutes’ contemplation of the turbulent waters, it’s time to ascend again. The return trip is a much more direct route.
There is a ladder, called the Sky Ladder, straight up the cliff. Ert counts fifty-eight rungs on the curving metal. Bolts hold the ladder to the wall. It’s tenuous, but it holds as we climb up one by one.
We climb ever upward, passing stands with sedan chairs cobbled together with bamboo and rebar– it looks like something else you can buy, a ride up the treacherous path on someone’s shoulders, but it’s too late in the day to be manned. It’s hard to imagine anything more terrifying than trusting two other people to carry you up this particularly winding and cliff-edged path.
In the evening, we watch the moon rise again, brighter and more full even than the night before.
In the morning, we hike again: uphill, above all the buildings, to the aqueduct which serves the villages.
We follow it back to its source: a pounding, clear waterfall into a pool. I take my shoes off to wade closer, and they tingle from re-warming when I step out.
Ert tries the sluice gate at the aqueduct’s head, closing the flow downhill and spilling the water into the side channel, where it waterfalls in great splashes onto the rocks. He brings the gate back up and creates a wave rolling down the open cement trench.
Back down the hill, we run into herds of goats out grazing. Two men, tiny, very tan, carrying ropes pass us on their way up the trail we take down. They double take and stare to see us foreigners out pleasure hiking on their working trails.
We take lunch at the guesthouse, and are whisked by van to our train far down the road in Lijiang.
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