I spent about a month in Yangshuo China and I was very impressed by how fast the number of routes grew while I was there. However, there still seems to be infinite potential at this place. On a rest day, our group decided to take a boat ride drifting down the most scenic section of the Li River. Not only did we appreciate the scenery with awe, but we were all excited by how many untouched limestone towers we counted. Many potential multi-pitch routes; many potential first ascents.

Rock climbing is still pretty young in China, but it grows fast. Just like people expect China to be a powerful economic entity, I expect China to be the ultimate climbing paradise. I studied the geography of China growing up and I know there are many mountains and rocks waiting to be touched. Until now, I have heard numerous stories about great climbing in different regions from my Chinese climbing friends and from western climbing explorers, and the stories keep coming.

I also want to explore China more for personal reasons. I feel a special connection with the geographic features in China because I am very fond of Chinese literature where writers and poets like to praise their land and the wonderful scenery surrounding them. In addition, I consider that land my land because of my Chinese cultural background. Ever since I started to get into outdoor endeavors in the States, I wanted to introduce how great Taiwan and China are for outdoor pursuits to my American friends. How could I not get excited by what I saw in Yangshuo, and that was only the tip of an iceberg.

This article concludes my Yangshuo China series and I have published the following articles on my blog. I have already started to plan my next trip to China and this time I want to spend more time and explore more places. I hope that you look forward to my next series about climbing in China.

Yangshuo China Series:

1. In and Out China
2. Westernized Yangshuo?
3. The Climbing Scene in Yangshuo
4. Yangshuo China Trip Report - Thumb Peak thru Happy New Year (5.10b)
5. Yangshuo China Trip Report - Twin Gate Mountain and its West Tower
6. Yangshuo China Trip Report - Low Mountain
7. Yangshuo China Trip Report - Treasure Cave
8. Yangshuo China Trip Report - Space Buttress
9. Yangshuo China Trip Report - Brave New World
10. Sport Climbing; Traditional Climbing
11. Climbing Potential in China

Photo Credit: Josie McKee

I had never considered myself a sport climber, simply because I don’t own any quickdraw. My impression about sport climbing was that it was difficult – most of the routes are overhanging and have hard grades. Not for me. The initial reason I started to rock climb was because I wanted to climb mountains and therefore when it was time to climb outside, jumping right into trad climbing was an obvious choice. Trad climbing has been giving me the sense of freedom and authority which I love. I would be content to climb trad routes throughout my climbing career. Why should I bother to invest in quickdraws?

I brought my trad rack for my Asia climbing trip, planning to use it in Taiwan. The climbing area in Taiwan, Long Dong, has more than a hundred trad routes. However, we didn’t stay in Taiwan for long because the weather wasn’t cooperating. I continued to bring my rack to Yangshuo China because on summitpost is says that there are some trad routes over there. Well, I climbed only one trad route in Yangshuo. That route was worth the hassle to bring my rack overseas, but the point here is that I had to become a sport climber in Yangshuo and I now have a brand new understanding about sport climbing.

First, I got yelled at about keeping the right relative location of my foot placement and the rope. When leading, we have to make sure the rope is always in front our body, which means that the rope is always between the rock and the feet; therefore when we fall, our feet won’t trip on the rope and our body won’t turn upside-down (an upside-down fall increases the chance of head injury). If we fall, we want a clean fall. This concept is not exclusive for sport climbing but in general sport climbing starts to offer more gymnastic moves at lower grades, so if you are not on top of this concept when you start sport climbing, chances are you will surprisingly discover that your feet are sandwiched between rock and rope on many occasions.

Second, I got yelled at when I down climbed, but this is quite debatable. In trad climbing, it is widely accepted that down climbing is a useful skill to have. Even though nowadays, the protection gear is very durable, but “leaders do not fall” is still a popular shared philosophy among leaders. Down climbing helps leaders to back off to a good rest spot and the energy level of a leader often dictates whether s/he will fall. In addition, being able to down climb and rest maximizes the chance of on-sighting a route, which many climbers consider as a mark of success and pride. I like on-sighting a route too. I remembered that at the beginning of the Yangshuo trip, on one climb, I down climbed for two-bolt length so that I could rest and contemplate on the hard move, my belayer said “Why are you down climbing? Szu-ting, you are sport climbing, just ‘take.’” I know many sport climbers “take” or fall and then climb back or pull the rope to come back to the falling spot and work on the rest of the climb. They climb routes like working on projects, once they are familiar with all the moves, they would send the route and red-point it. I was not working a project and the route wasn’t overhanging which would make down climbing not trivial. If I could on sight the route, why not?

Third, I entered the “whipper school.” I don’t like to fall. Before climbing in China, I could count the number of sport routes I had done. When I said “I don’t like to fall,” people understood. People tend to trust bolts more than cams and nuts, and since I was and still am a moderate trad leader, most of of routes I lead (grade 5.9 and lower) don’t usually have clean falls. When I climbed in Yangshuo China, the grade starts with 5.9 and unless there was some weird feature in the way, most climbs were steep or overhanging so the fall was clean and safe. “You should not take, just fall!” “It’s time to push your limit.” Pushing limits is a common reason for trad climbers to do sport routes because they can focus mostly on climbing and the fall is usually clean. I still didn’t want to fall but I wanted to overcome it and push myself to experience more harmless fall so I could get used to the feeling. I entered my friend, Josie Mckee’s whipper school. She told me “no take, even if you yell take.” I did fall a couple times during my enrollment, it was not too bad but I am still not comfortable quite yet. However, most definitely I have reconsidered the value of sport climbing as a climber coming from the trad world.

The most interesting difference I found was between my mindsets towards traditional climbing and sport climbing. When I lead trad routes, I assess the route so that I can climb from one rest spot to the next rest spot; when I lead sport routes, I find I pay less attention to the natural features on rock; I connect the bolts to project my climbing path. Sometimes I end up clipping bolts from a not ideal stance. I think it will be most beneficial to replace the sport climbing mindset with traditional climbing mindset. I should ignore the bolts first to practice route finding. When I visualize a climb from the ground, I add the locations of bolts into consideration as if they are where I would set my pros as a predetermined constraint.

To conclude, my take on sport climbing is as follows:

First, sport climbing is indeed a good training method if I want to focus on climbing. It’s more than ninety percent climbing with less than ten percent of protecting and rope handling. Traditional climbing is more of a combination of even distribution of climbing and protecting.

Second, I like to climb so I of course do not want to keep sport climbing off the table. I am a climber and I’d love to proudly declare that I climb everything within my ability. Just like I say I eat everything that is eatable (this proud statement is no longer true since a couple years ago I started to be very intolerant of lactose. What a pity).

Third, projecting seems really fun. Instead of setting my mind on big alpine routes, I can start with smaller, shorter-term goals and really work out my body within a day or hours.

I am a climber; I climb everything within my ability. I love to push my limit so that I have more flexibility to choose routes.

Photo Credit: Josie McKee

On December 11, 2008, I climbed my favorite route in Yangshuo, The Witch Woman of the Rock, in this fairly young developed area called Brave New World. The Witch Woman of the Rock is a 5-pitch climb; in the guidebook it is described as “a good traditional line of continuous crack climbing, well protected throughout.” The crack was easily spotted from a distance and the line was beautiful. Little did we know we would soon experience the most amazing view ever since we arrived in Yangshuo. Different from many other climbing areas, instead of situating itself within many other limestone towers and formations, Brave New World keeps a distance from them. When we were on top of the second pitch, this panoramic view took our breath away. The view can probably be captured by a wide angle lens but the touching emotion was beyond words.

The Witch Woman of the Rock was the last multi-pitch climb of my China trip. Towards the end of my stay, I was browsing the guidebook to seek for something interesting and this route caught my eyes. A 5.10c trad route. I knew that I was not ready to lead a .10c pitch but I brought my trad rack all the way from the States; I wanted to put them to use. The 5.10c pitch is the last pitch, and we rappel the route to descend. We can always bail or French aid the route (aka pulling gear to propel upwards).

The first pitch was a 20-meter 5.9. I followed it. The last move was quite bold and one bolt was there just to protect the follower. The second pitch was 5.10b pitch; it is not the crux pitch but I was still nervous because it was my first 5.10b trad lead. I stalled at one spot for a while, and I climbed up and climbed back down three times. I was very glad that the small ledge was there for me to replenish my energy. Finally I did an awkward chimney move and after a few scary moves, I was able to regain good footing. The chimney move was awkward because the feature soon got interrupted by a roof. The other option is to climb outside the feature and deal with a bulgy feature on the left side and eventually land the right foot high on a feature sticking out from the right. I chose to use the chimney. Because of the roof I couldn’t fully extend my upper body and therefore I had to duck the whole way while slowly moving my feet up. Well somehow in a chimney, I had a sense of security. My partner chose the outside route apparently, but I was just proud that I led it.

The difficulty of the third pitch was somewhere between 5.9 and 5.10a. I had great fun following it while my leader might have thought otherwise because I could see marginal gear placement dictated by the rock quality and feature. He linked the fourth pitch, which was a mellow 5.6, and left me deal with the final 5.10c pitch.

The start of the last pitch was straight overhanging, and it also blocked the view of the rest of the climb. It looked pretty difficult already and we wished it would be the crux section. We were not sure whether the route went straight up because on the right, there was an inviting ramp for exiting. At any rate, I needed to get up higher to see the rest of the climb in order to figure out the path of the least resistance.

I put two pieces in, and managed to get higher. There were some good handholds, but they were quite polished and they were all open-hand handholds, not the best kind to grab. I hung on my left arm and placed my left foot in a hole, looking for next good gear placement. My right hand felt something and I screamed with excitement “I found a place to thread!” I was still hanging on my left arm, my left foot was still in this hole far to the left and my right foot was hanging in the air to maintain my balance. I pulled out a single length sling and started to thread the bar feature. The sling was soft and the space behind that little bar was tight, and I started to feel tired, I mumbled “come on, thread; come on…” Right before my left arm gave up on me, enough sling was pushed out behind the bar. I soon grabbed the bar with my right hand, finished the threading with my left hand, clipped a carabiner, clipped the rope and of course yelled “take!”

I felt so much more comfortable with that thread in place because I knew that it was a bomber protection piece, probably the best piece throughout the climb so far. Since there was still much difficult overhanging climbing straight ahead, I decided that it was time to get on the ramp and take a good look at the rest of the climb. Getting through the ramp wasn’t a piece of cake either, I pulled on two cams and finally was able to throw in some hand jamming to get on a ledge. I looked and pondered, the route mostly definitely went straight up. What was waiting for us if we could manage to overcome the first overhanging section was another long overhanging and flaring feature - a tiny crack inside a corner was all it could offer to accommodate gear. We didn’t have many small pieces but it was not relevant for us because it looked like what we could have was bad gear placement anyway.

“Let’s bail,” I said. We left a carabiner and a sling behind. I was very happy. We could have bailed right after we reached the top of the fourth pitch, but we didn’t. We gave it a try, we evaluated the situation and we made a conscious decision. Going to the top matters sometimes but the process of going to the top or not matters always. I was happy I bailed because I chose to. The rappelling to the base was cool. The full moon was up before the sunset, and this route made my trip.

Photo Credit: Josie McKee

The path leading to the base of Space Buttress was tricky to find; it is right next to a farmer’s house. Before reaching the base, you see a mini pigpen first, which makes you doubt yourself twice whether you are indeed trespassing other people’s property.

When we were climbing there, the owner of the house came to chat with us. He humbly stated out his concerns for climbers; it seems that many climbers had walked right in middle of his front yard when they missed the path a couple feet away. He said, “if it’s sunny, I don’t mind but when it’s rainy, people just leave mud everywhere and it takes forever for us to clean.” Although local farmers do not own the cliffs, they are in fact very generous allowing climbers to climb at very close proximity. I suggested him to make a sign and promised him that I would email the author of the guidebook to urge him to put something in the new edition to help maintain a friendly relationship between climbers and locals. Gladly, on the same day, I also bumped into a western route setter who told me that those actions were in fact under progress.

We climbed a few routes; I was very fond of this 25-meter route called Klingon. It has very technical and fun moves at the bottom, followed by powerful elements towards the top. My favorite route was Dark Star, a two-pitch route, 5.10a and 5.10b. The 5.10b pitch is long - 25 meters. The 5.10a pitch is shorter but it is at least 15 meters long. I decided to link the two pitches together, and carried 26 draws on my harness which almost gave me this delusion that I was trad climbing.

The first two/three moves of the 5.10a pitch were easy and then I arrived at this scary spot - the next bolt was kind of far, it was exposed, and the fall didn’t look pretty. I had to step out left and use either lie-backing (which required me to lean all the way to the left) or try to throw some jams in that wide crack in a corner to the right without many good footholds. Anybody who has climbed with me before would know that I almost always choose jamming over lie-backing especially when I am on lead; no exception here. Jamming gives me a sense of security even though sometimes lie-backing is a more efficient choice (later, my two friends both lie-backed the part).

The 5.10b was long and super fun. It started with many exposed but good and interesting stemming moves. None of the moves throughout the climb were difficult but the difficulty of the climb was very consistent. In my opinion, it was the 25 meters worth of consistency that won the route a 5.10b grade. I could do all the moves but I had to “take” towards the end when I had only three more bolts to clip. I wish I could have rested more at the ledge where the first pitch ended. I remembered that I read this line in one book, “when you lead, you rest wherever you can even when you think you don’t need it.” Until now, many of my climbing occasions have reminded me of this line, and I still haven’t taken full advantage of all the resting opportunities. Furthermore, I can always try to improve my endurance, and this route is perfect for that reason: this .10b pitch is so fun and consistent that I am more than happy to do laps on it.

Photo Credit: Ian Farquhar

Treasure Cave takes climbers some hiking to get into, but it was worth our effort. It is located at the upper part of a limestone formation, and it is more than spacious enough to accommodate several 100-foot routes. Needless to say, as a cave, it provided us an excellent escape from the still blazing sun of early December. The inner-cave scenery was really something - an outline of the cave combined with a mixed view of fields, farm animals, and neighboring karst towers. It was a pity that we got a couple wet routes resulting from the leaking ceiling. Oh, aren’t we just greedy?

We did five routes. A 5.9, called Adventure Race Groupies, sped up our blood flow. It was followed by another wet and therefore somehow scary 5.9 called Where’s My Tyrolean. We set up a top rope using the shared anchor for a powerful unnamed 5.10+ climb, which I couldn’t do as one pass. The fourth climb we led was a 2-star 5.10b called Losing Face. This route is a 5.9 in general with a tricky 5.10b move which potentially would make people lose face. I finally moved through the crux by applying the following sequence: I moved my left foot as high as possible, and used a crappy left crimper with a tiny right side pull to bump myself up to very good hand holds. I was very proud that I figured out the sequence, but what made me even more proud was the lead of the last climb of the day - a 25-meter 5.10a called Sai Yan which was also marked as a 2-star route in the guidebook.

Sai Yan is a weird looking route. It starts with a wide crack and two bolts are located after a ledge. Before the route reaches another ledge, a giant protruding block joins from the left and becomes part of the climb. There are two bolts on this block as well. To clip these four bolts was not too much of a problem for me, although I did complain that the route was so exposed and I had to do super wide stemming to get this far.

The next bolt shows up right before a roof. I saw a crack to the left of my projected upward path, and the bolt was right next to the top of the crack. I thought there must have been some jugs hidden in the crack but my hope was unfulfilled. The crack only offered a long sequence of repetitive side pulling which translated to unsecured hand movement in my mind. I looked down; the consequence of falling was high; god damn the protruding block because it would be my landing grave if I would have fallen. I clipped the fifth bolt and I sighed.

I rested myself marginally at an awkward stance, and I tried to straighten my arms to conserve my ever-losing energy. I moved up and what welcomed me was an awkward looking humongous horn-shaped formation sticking out from the left. I couldn’t see a thing, including the sixth bolt which I knew was somewhere to my right. I tried to move out to the right a little bit more, and I still couldn’t see the bolt, neither did I feel secured, and the consequence of falling remained high. I backed off to my original spot, where I could hold on to something to keep myself in place. I yelled down “Where is the bolt?” Corey yelled back “it was right there” and started to give me more detailed references. I reached out my fingers and I felt the bolt. I clipped the bolt with my fingertip memory. I couldn’t fall and I didn’t fall.

After the success of the blind clipping, I regained the courage to boldly move way out to the right and retrieve the location of good handholds. The upper portion of the climb gradually became mellower but I failed to on-sight it because I was beaten up by the exposure, physically demanding overhanging feature, and the fear of the serious consequence of falling. My two friends didn’t lead it because they “didn’t want to kill themselves” especially after watching me leading it.

I jumped on it because the route has two stars and it’s long (I personally prefer long routes). And of course I thought I could do it. I was scared at some point because I didn’t like the price of falling. But that sense of fear was quite different than some random fear which often occurs to me at some climb especially when I try to move through a crux but the fall is in fact very safe. At the occasion of climbing Sai Yan, I thought “I must not fall,” but on other occasions I think “I do not want to fall.” If I back off when I must not fall, I will not feel bad; If I back off when I do not want to fall, I will feel I did not exert myself fully and therefore feel sorry.

When I chose to proceed with the climb, Sai Yan, at places I felt that I must not fall, once I got into action, I was very focussed on each of my moves and therefore my brain had no more space for fear. Interestingly, many times when I chose to proceed when I felt that I did not want to fall, my moves were still sloppy because the fear was still there. My expectation is that I will always make the right choice either to proceed or bail when I must not fall; and I will learn a way to accommodate my fear when the fall is safe because the experience of being crystal clear on a climbing sequence is priceless.

Photo Credit: Ian Farquhar