“Dad”, she said on a recent camping trip. “Dad, I don’t want to tent, I want to bivvy. I want to bivvy in a castle”.
Once I got over my little rush of Adventure Dad pride, I thought back to the trip she was recalling. Our last camping – I mean bivvying – trip in China at our favourite spot, a tower called Kouzilou above the mighty pass at Shixiaguan. There, in September 2018, we had a wonderful bivvy in glorious weather, and apparently set a high bar for all future Daddy-Daughter camping trips. It was official: the kid likes to bivvy.
This tower is one of my favourites. I first bivvied here in the beautiful summer of 2012; I’ve also hiked here in the depths of winter and navigated a party past here in a freezing white-out. In April 2017, I camped near this tower with the kid, then just past two years old.
Kouzilou was meant to be the last stop in an ill-fated four day trip I’d planned. In January 2018 I came up here alone and left a food and water stash semi-buried about 50 meters from the tower. I marked the spot with GPS, but months went by and I could never complete the trip. When it was time for this bivvy, I figured I could use that stash of supplies and save myself carrying it all uphill.
Unlike last time, when I had the baby carrier and a chest rig to get all that stuff uphill, this time I went with my trusty pack and a lot of hope in the kid’s willingness to walk. Even still, there was a lot to carry – two sleeping bags, two inflatable mats, my tripod and drone, a stove and fuel, and enough water for the first part of the trip.
 First bivvy |
 Great Wall Camping |
 Hebei Road Trip |
The hike up was easy as always. Well, until the theory about the kid walking unravelled. After that, it was hard work because she had to go up on my shoulders. In short bursts, that was actually okay, but as we got to the top I was sore and very much looking forward to the chocolate and other food I knew was in my food cache.
Well, guess what? When I got to the top and reached for the GPS to look for the food… it turned out I’d forgotten the GPS. Persuading the kid to stand there on the wall, I then spent 20 minutes in the nearby bushes trying to piece together a memory of where I’d left the wall, and in what direction, and how far I’d gone, all of it eight months ago when there was no greenery here. I kicked up a lot of dust in those 20 minutes and got nowhere. Dinner was going to be dry cereal. Sorry, kiddo.
I’d like to say it was the kid’s first experience of a Richy Special*. But I’d be lying.
*A Richy Special is a hike on which people have to endure some combination of terrible weather, longer-than-expected duration, limited food and water; usually because it turned out to be a bit harder than I thought.
It was going to be dark soon so we mucked around flying the drone for a bit and then set up our bivvy. These towers are incredibly dry and dusty inside, and unfortunately there was a fair bit of broken glass – very small pieces, but enough to cut a sleeping mat, or a sleeping kid. So we dealt with all of that and then the kid set up the inflatable lamp with a clever stick arrangement (I had to hang it up for her, but she put it together).
We’d had uncommonly clear skies and good weather, and were rewarded with a beautiful sunset. I loved that view over the Guanting Reservoir, and I knew this would be the last time in a long time that I’d ever see it in the evening. I tried hard to soak that in. I had so many deep and important memories at this tower – Great Wall memories and Dad memories.
She fell asleep pretty quickly and I spent a lot of time after that trying to take a timelapse of the stars over the tower. I felt the examples I’d seen online were always unrealistically bright, so I tried to make mine closer to what I saw with my own eyes. The result was sadly too dark – but here it is anyway (if you view it in a dark room on full screen you can see it).
She slept very soundly and after all the messing around with the cameras, so did I. It was quiet that night, not at all windy (unlike last time). People sometimes ask if I feel safe sleeping out on the Great Wall, or in a tower, and the answer is “yes”. In fact, sleeping in a nice tower like this one is even more reassuring than bivvying on or near the wall – there was no way a badger or curious fox was getting anywhere near us up inside there. Just about my only concern would have been my daughter waking in the night and possibly sleep walking her way right out a window. For that reason, I slept lightly, but I did sleep.
Never, never light a fire in a tower – never. Don’t take a dump in there, and don’t pee. Carry out all your trash. Treat it with the utmost care, and leave no trace.
iron-clad rules for bivvying in great wall towers
Next day was blue and lovely like the last, and we ate what was left of our cereal – not a lot. It was still quite early when we set off down the hill towards the car.
Her other big memory of this trip, beyond “sleeping in a castle”, was the huge number of spider webs we encountered on the path. These prodigious weavers had strung maybe fifty webs at different points across the trail, each of them next to invisible in the bright morning sun. A spider web in the face is no fun, and there were plenty I felt before I saw. She thought it was kind of hilarious, until one brushed her face too. Much of the way down, it was ten steps forward, then suddenly two backwards.
When we got to the car, I had a special treat – a nice cold bottle of soy milk which I had wrapped in some special insulating material to keep it fairly cold. She enjoyed that. I took off my shirt and found a huge tick on my left shoulder; strangely it fell off when I brushed it. I’d seen several of these big ugly things up in the tower but as far as I could tell not a single one had bitten us. Good thing; they were pretty disgusting.
Down at the nearby village, we went inside the little country restaurant. It was too early for lunch but the lady was willing to make us whatever we wanted. What do you want, I asked the kid. “Nootles! And jiaozi!” Boom – noodles (or nootles) and dumplings. Before long we had them and man, we ate them quickly after nothing but cereal for almost 24 hours.
On the way home, we stopped in at a small village called Shidongcun. Here, we wrapped up our little bivvy trip with a visit to the temple. The monk there was apparently as fascinated by us – this place was a long way off the main route for foreigners – as we were by him and his little temple. As we were about to leave, he asked for a photo. Sure, I said, and took the chance to grab one, too.
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