C.J. Neff

“The Egg” is the name of a fairly big and good quality crag in Yángshuò. Even though this post has a food title, it was supposed to be about climbing. But it turned out to be a smidgen too hot to climb comfortably (this story takes place months ago; I’m not back in Yángshuò right now; I’m just getting to some older posts), so the only thing I ended up taking pictures of that day was food!

It’s worth noting that there’s a fantastic 5.10- at The Egg. It’s over thirty meters long, maybe 31 or 33 meters (it was definitely an odd number!), but a 60 meter rope will get you back down to the ground via the stretch, if my memory still holds. It’s not a beginner’s ten; it feels exposed because it traverses left and right quite a bit, so you spend more time than normal looking in directions that aren’t up. Also, there’s a bit of a runout at the end that feels quite dangerous. The finish traverses left, but your last draw is back on the other side of a dihedral, so a fall would send you swinging back rightward onto that other face. On your second ascent, however, you realize that last little bit of climbing is like 5.6, so it’s “fine”.

Lilly suggested, in the morning, that we grab lunch before we leave, and we ended up at a dumpling place. These photos, for me, are just divine. I love it!

First thing to note is that it’s totally acceptable to waltz right on back to the kitchen of any Chinese restaurant (in China). Feel free to poke around, take some pictures, whatever you need to do. Imagine doing this in America!

Perhaps the reason why you can’t do this in America is that you’re likely to find all the food in factory-sealed freezer bags and rows of microwaves. Most restaurants in America aren’t anything more than full service reheating stalls.

Part of the magic of less developed regions (I wanted to say “countries”, but China is a mix of super developed and crazy poor, all at once) is that food is still food (not food-like chemical substitutions), and restaurants are staffed by chefs (artists), not cooks or food scientists. Look at this first picture! I dare you to find a restaurant in America that makes its dough as simply and naturally as this. It’s possible, but you’re going to pay through the nose for such “boutique” tastes. These dumplings I had were cheap, like one U.S. dollar cheap for ten dumplings!

Further, the dumplings are made to order. It literally could not be any fresher. The 10 minutes it takes them to prepare your dumplings are spent stuffing and forming.




And then frying or steaming.




Before you order your dumplings, they don’t exist. How crazy!

We also picked up some fruit that day: lychee. Their Chinese name is 荔枝 (lì zhī), which you might actually be able to consider a cognate, i.e. one of the dozen or so words that sounds similar in both English and Chinese.

Location:Yángshuò

I think the guys in Huàshān ended up scouting a couple more than the original three spots we all saw together, and I’ve even heard a rumor that they bolted a 10-pitch epic; I didn’t get to see that, but what I did have the pleasure of seeing was breathtaking.

The first crag we all scouted together was actually a collection of relatively small crags, but all together there were probably a hundred different lines in this single spot. There was everything: slab, chimney, overhang. And the rock quality was great; it’s perfect granite! I had heard that this granite didn’t lend itself to trad too well, but I didn’t understand why before seeing the rock for myself. There are cracks in the rock, but the “seams” are kind of “sealed”; the cracks are essentially just hairline fractures; you can’t get any removable gear in there. I think this first spot will get bolted eventually; it just didn’t have that wow factor you want in a destination’s first crag, like Moon Hill had in Yángshuò.

Here’s the second spot we scouted, and I think the guys actually ended up bolting here. There are two big faces on opposite sides of the river. The face on the far side of the river is quite dramatically overhung. The guys had top access here, so they put up a bunch of lines in a short amount of time.

This next photo shows the crag I had my eye on. I would say it’s about a hundred to a hundred and fifty vertical meters of climbable rock. It would take a few pitches to get to the top, but the rock was stunning, and there are at least a few, obvious, good lines. In this first picture, you can see that there’s an equally large crag on the other (left) side of the road. Those lines were quite slabby and, thus, didn’t tickle my fancy quite as much.




Here’s another view of the same chunk of rock. I think the best lines were on this face. How nice that the climbing would be in the shade in the afternoon.

Location:Huàshān

I woke up Friday and did my daily wake-up ritual: check my calendar, check my email, and check my internets. I had a little laugh when I noticed it was Friday the 13th. It’s pretty much the only Western superstition I can name without thinking too hard; I’m sure we have more, but we don’t have that many compared to China. This place has got to be the mecca of superstitions; they’ve got feng shui, numerology, and a bunch of other customs that all amount, in my opinion, to superstitions. And, being a Westerner, I’ve got a fairly causal view of the world; superstitions don’t really play into my decision making or even my consciousness much at all. That’s why I enjoyed that chuckle Friday morning; I’m in a place that lives by their superstitions, and yesterday happened to be the one superstitious day on a Western calendar.

It turned out the joke was on me. Everything changed yesterday. I was under the impression that almost everything would be paid for on this bolting trip, a prerequisite for my presence, as I’m essentially broke. I knew I would have to pay for a flight or train ride here or there, and that seemed reasonable considering I wasn’t included in the original budget. But yesterday morning I was informed that, effective a day earlier, I would need to start paying for my own food, hotel, daily taxis, and any and all other expenses.

What? I spent most of the day in shock. Lèyè was one of the best moments of my life. I learned so much! I bolted my first two routes; I put up a couple first ascents, and we ate and slept like kings for two weeks. I was so excited for the remaining four weeks of this trip. I felt unstoppable; I was on top of the world. And then this! I had encountered a fork in the road; did I want to pay my own way for four weeks, or did I want to bow out? Not an easy decision when you understand the awesomeness of the first four weeks, the first half of this project.

And then, everything changed again. Morgan and I discovered that one of the members on the team didn’t want us on the trip anymore. We understand that we’re the least experienced on this trip, but we had been pulling our own weight. We both have callused and blistered hands from belaying for hours and hours and hours. And we were both always certain to carry more than our fair share of the weight of all the bolting gear; ropes, hardware, drills, etc. So we thought we were serving the team well. Needless to say, the news came as an utter surprise to us. And, for me, it was too much to handle. There’s nothing more basic to human existence than feeling wanted, and I know it was only one person out of a group of about a dozen who was unhappy with our presence (i.e. about 10 other people wanted us to stay), but it was too much for me; I couldn’t stay.

So Morgan and I have decided to plot our own adventure for the next few weeks. The plans are very open ended at the moment, but we’re taking climbing equipment with us, so hopefully we’ll make it to some rock eventually. I’d really like to make it to either Hong Kong or Singapore in about a month to catch up with some San Franciscans I’m fond of. So, as one journey ends, another begins! To be continued, eh?

Location:Xī’ān

Āiyā! I was literally one move away from sending Toni’s open project on our last day in Lèyè. There’s this gaston-y blob just before the anchors and just after pulling out of the roof; I pulled out of the roof no problem, and then the pump kicked me off this last, easy hold. I gave it four tries total and made it further each attempt; one more attempt and it definitely would have gone; we just, simply, ran out of time.

Here’s the view out the front of the cave during our last sunset. Lèyè is absolutely gorgeous, and it’s worth adding to the Yángshuò-Gétū circuit that many climber-travelers enjoy here in China. Cool thing is, Lèyè is pretty much on the way between those two existing destinations.

There’s something missing from this next picture. My hand doesn’t look beat up at all in this photo, so it kind of sounds sad when I say that this is the worst my hands have ever looked, but I’ve got to assure you that it’s just a bad photo. There are bruises and scrapes and punctures and cuts and calluses and blisters all on this single hand, and the other hand looks the same too; I just couldn’t figure out how to take a picture of both my hands at the same time!




So we burned an entire day (a long day too (7 in the morning until 1 in the morning the next day)) getting from Lèyè to Xī’ān, our third destination out of five. Here’s one of our two little vans that we hired to get from Lèyè to Nánníng.




I was obliged to make a panorama in the Nánníng airport. I love airport architecture!




Here’s the ceiling at the airport. You’ve always got to look up at the airport; they’ve got the best ceilings.




And then it was necessary to do this. When in Rome, take pictures of foreigners just like the Chinese do!

Location:China

So far, I’ve sent my two routes, an 11d and a 12a, and yesterday I sent Duncan’s route, “Hungry, Hungry Hippos”, a 5.12b. I was working a 5.12c yesterday that finishes in a chimney flake, which looks amazing, but I just couldn’t get past the two thirds point; i.e., I didn’t even make it up to this climb’s defining feature.

Yesterday, I finished by starting to play on Toni’s open project; it’s probably a 5.12d. It’s extremely steep, like 45 degrees or more overhung for more than half the climb. I’d be super stoked if I could send it today, but it’s going to be a stretch, and today’s our last day in town!

Other than that, I’ve just been on belay and jugging up routes to clean them (knock the loose rocks off) or even top roping climbs to clean the draws off (the climbs are so overhung that they can’t be cleaned top down). My hands have taken a beating from all the rope handling and virgin, cave (i.e. sharp) rocks.

Here’s a bit of a panorama of the first chamber of our cave system. The two bright strips on either end of the photo are the two edges of the mouth of the cave, and the bright spot in the middle is the way to the other chamber.

Location:Lèyè, China

Here are two locations that we actually passed on. We saw both of these, among others, on our first day in Lèyè.

This first cave system is somewhat similar to the cave we’ve been working in for two weeks now, and I think we had nearly convinced ourselves to bolt in this cave instead, but there were quite a few lines already bolted in this cave. We were really looking for a virgin crag, so we chose the other one (even though that one also had a few lines already up). Notice in this photo that there’s the big cave in the foreground, and then there’s a whole second cave, the dark mouth of which is visible in the background. This location is worth coming back to to throw up another 50 lines, easily.

The second location that we passed on is absolutely stunning. The scale of this stuff just doesn’t come across properly in my photograph. The big feature on the left is enormous, and it’s super overhung. Sadly, that rock is nearly blank; if there are climbs there, they would be super difficult. Note, though, that there’s a big cave visible in the top right of the photo. There could be some good climbing in there!

Location:Lèyè, China

We scoped out this incredible location a few days ago. It’s one of the premier destinations in Lèyè; i.e., there are photos of this place on all the local tourist advertisements. It’s a big, single-chamber cave, with a small hole in the ceiling that casts this single, narrow, incredible God ray across the walls of the cave like a sundial throughout the day.

In order the get to there, you walk up a “handful” of stairs, pass through the cave below, conquer a few more stairs, and then hike down into the sundial cave. The first, through cave is interesting because the locals have set up a sort of “botanical wonders” exhibit. They’ve got all these rare plants on display inside the cave; each plant is in its own little glass bottle and illuminated with its own light. It was a bit creepy because the lights in the cave are rigged up to motion sensors, so you walk into the cave not knowing what’s coming next, and, then, all of a sudden, this huge exhibit illuminates itself.

So here’s a view out the mouth of the big sundial cave. It’s 100 meters from the hole at the top to the ground at the bottom. 100 meters! Toni and Dave spent the last two days bolting a seven pitch epic that goes from the ground out the hole at the top. Apparently there’s a roof crack pitch, a muddy slab pitch, darkness, bugs, and even more “adventure”!




I’m sure Superman, our photographer on this trip, got some amazing photos, and I’m sure Kailas will put together something incredible when we’re all done. Stay tuned for a link to that in the coming weeks.

Location:Lèyè, China

We put up some interesting lines today! It sounds like we’re signaling Duncan with an air horn or something fancy like that at the beginning of this video, but it’s just a truck passing by.

Location:Tongle Middle Rd,Bose,China