Oh right, Mountains

Kellen Smetana
When I used the word “Mountain” in earlier posts, just replace with “mountain” (lower case) or “really big hills.”  With a fully loaded bicycle you can almost forget what real mountains are until you’re back in them.  And we are now.

Getting back up into some real Mountains

China can basically be divided into three broad regions: the arid basin and desert of Xinjiang province in the northwest (plenty of that to come…); the Tibetan / Qinghai plateau of the southwest which includes the Himalayas; and the fertile plains / river basins of the east fed by water from the mountains.  In the past week, we left these basins for the last time and have ascended into the plateau.

This is how you leave a river valley

After a couple flat bland days buzzing across the intensely populated Sichuan Basin, we were both really looking forward to the jolt of the earth’s crust rising on the horizon – much like you experience driving west into the Rockies.  The jolt was there; the mountains did appear, but they weren’t what we expected.  We had to put up with a couple more gray days climbing along the silt-ridden Min Jiang River until we finally got into The Mountains.  It was rather dramatic still; we came out of one of the countless mile-long tunnels (definitely worthy of their own later post) to snow-capped peaks.  Yes!  We have arrived.

Ready to ride through a tunnel

Fortunately, the gray days of climbing weren’t without sights.  Actually, we quickly discovered why the entire valley was so gray: landslides.  Landslides caused by the massive earthquake that shook this region back in May 2008.  It’s pretty hard to miss, as China has made sure to label every rock that fell during the quake (“5.12” for May 12) and primed the entire region for tourism.  It was also an interesting mental exercise for me as I remembered reading news articles about the earthquake back when it happened and in my mind I had placed this industrial central-China river valley somewhere miles beyond the ends of the earth.  Let’s just say it wasn’t a place I envisioned myself exactly three years later; strange things sometimes happen.

These rocks fell

And lest I forget we are one month into the trip and there is a fundraising contest at hand (if you are unfamiliar with the details, visit the Sponsor page).  April’s winner is: The Denton Family – Jim, Laura, Steve, and Jeff.  Expect an email shortly.  (And to everyone, it was done fairly with an Excel random number generator if you’re interested).  As you saw from the food post, we have a difficult enough time ordering food, so it may be tough to cook something up right away.  But don’t worry, we will eventually put our chef hats on and make sure to document on video.

For now though, we have thus far reached an altitude of 2,800 meters (that’s 9,186 feet for those of you still stuck on the old system) in the northern Sichuan town of Songpan and have much more to climb as we head further north and west.  Word on the street is heavy snow and potential problematic run-ins with military checkpoints in the next week.  Stay tuned.