I faced my fear (again) and it kicked my butt for 3 days straight!

Lonely Planet says this about the Tiger Leaping Gorge (TLG).

"After making its first turn at Shigu, the mighty Yangzi River surges between Haba Shan and Yulong Xueshan, through one of the deepest gorges in the world. The entire gorge measures 16 km, and it's a giddy 3900 m from the waters to the snowcapped mountaintops....the hike through the gorge has gone from obscure adventure to the can't miss experience of nothern Yunnan"

After reading this, who can resist. We decided we needed to see this natural wonder. After trying to get information in Lijiang and Dali on how bad the high trail would be we thought, well, we can decide if we want to do it or go in on the low trail.

Getting to TLG was really easy. We stayed just inside the park gate one night and decided what to bring in with us for a 2 or 3 day trip.

With minimal stuff and our packs stored at the hostel, we were off. My GPS reading at the hostel was around 2000 m.

The start of the trail is very nice. You slowly walk through some terraced farm land and there are locals there with their donkeys which try to get you to ride and they'll take you through the high trail. We kept telling this guy we didn't want to but he followed us for quite a while. I think they did this just to make sure we didn't get lost. We had met some people who got lost for 6 hours on the trail! Luckily for us I guess.

It's hard to say exactly when I started to freak out but I'm sure it was around the first time I had to go around the outside of the hill. It's ok on the inside, there's usually no steep drops, but when you come around the outside, it's straight down!

After a couple of these I was pretty much freaking out. And we haven't even gotten to a place called 28 bends. 28 switchbacks practically straight up the mountain to 2600 m, then another damned outside bend! I didn't even bother to get a picture I was so scared! Jenni may have one...

Our first stop for the night was in a village in the mountain. Beautiful place. And we ended up staying in a room on stilts. Great right!

View was amazing though even I must admit.

Next day was better and we decided that Ian has had enough stress so we took the road back down to the low trail. More switchbacks...but at least the road was wide! Sigh....

Once on the low trail we though it would be easy, but nope....now we had to worry about landslides. We heard little rocks falling from above and ended up running across this damned area. Bad news is we would have to come out again this way by car.

A better walk into Walnut Garden and we were done for our second day. Sat on the patio and listened to other trekkers stories about the rest of the trail and lived vicariously through them! :)

Here's a video of part of the ride out . There was real fear and terror in my eyes. Maybe not Jenni's.

In the end we did make it out and I almost kissed the ground!

On to Everest Base Camp trek next! ;)