Yangshuo

Apologies for the long time between posts, I just got back from 3 weeks climbing in Yangshuo, China. It's limestone Karst country, with some tufa climbing, some overhanging pockets and caves, and some slab-like climbing. It's certainly an interesting mix, and a very enjoyable place to climb.

The climbing was great, as was the group we had, mostly current or former ANUMC members, and based out of Canberra. We spent a lot of weekends in the lead up climbing in Nowra, as the sandstone there seemed better suited to training for limestone than anything else that we had available.

Phil is so expressive

The Climbing


The climbing is varied on the cliffs around Yangshuo. It's not as tufa heavy as the tropical limestone in Thailand, but it has a combination of tufas, pockets, and slabby walls. You will find something you will enjoy here, although some of the higher traffic areas are getting polished and chalk caked in places.

The grading is meant to be  a little stiffer than Thailand, which I probably agree with. I think I'm climbing as well as I ever have, and I only managed to match my previous redpoint grade from Thailand, although I know that that was accomplished on a soft 7a+

Moon Hill
My favourite areas were:
- Moon hill (No climbing - At own Risk!), although we were pretty burned out thatday, so we didn't get up much.
- Dragon city, the only crag that we visited twice, as both Bonnie and I wanted to return to projects there. I sent mine, but Bonnie didn't have the energy to do hers, but she managed a different 6c that was more her style on the slabs below later that afternoon.
- the Left side of Swiss Cheese, there were several routes on this wall that were really nice, the 6b? on the right end was fantastic, as was the 7a up the centre.
- The egg, there's a lot of rock here, and some of it was absolutely amazing
- White Mountain, I would have loved to go back. This was another crag visited on a low day, but I still loved the routes I did, and had some more that might have gone with another day or two.


Local Transport


Most of the crags are a few kilometers out of town, while you can walk back from some of the close ones, it's not a lot of fun. The further crags are more than 10km away, so some form of transport is advisable.

We mostly hired a van and a driver, which caused some issues at times. It was much cheaper for the group to take a van, but it meant that we had to communicate a location, and we had to decide on a time to leave when we arrived at the crag.

There were a few days where we hired a motor scooter if it was just a couple of people, and I did so for the last 2 days where I was running solo and meeting up with other climbers.

The Food


The food was pretty good, it improved substantially after the first few days when I go a feel for what was around, and Bonnie arrived with a better understanding of the local food (and language).
Our go to breakfast was some combination of Congee, noodles, soy milk, and fried dough sticks.
Lunch was usually snacks, crackers, penut brittle, bakery goods, or something else that we could carry with us.
Dinner was a bit more varied, noodles, indian, fried shallot fritter things, rice, various meats and veges. Even snails one evening.


Staying there


Prices were a little steeper than the internet had led me to believe. It seems that the area has become more popular and developed over the last few years.
A double room at a fairly cheap hostel was about 150 RMB /night
Breakfast for us was 10-15RMB, but the rest of our group was spending 30-50 on western style meals
lunch varied, but was usually under 10 RMB.
We tended to splurge a little more on dinner, so it was usually 30-50 RMB




















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