October sacred Mountains trip
I have the months of October off (actually Sept 25 - Oct 30) and am planning on doing some touring. Last week I decided on a theme for the tour - visiting (and climbing) many of the sacred mountains of China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Mountains_of_China. I welcome fellow motorcyclists to join me on all or any parts of the trip. At this point I don't have a set itinerary. I live nearby Beijing so of course starting from there and probably visiting the closest mountains (North Heng Shan & Wutai Shan) first, then I still have a chance to go back home to regroup or repack as I discover needs. If possible I'l visit all of the 5 great mountains and all of the 4 Sacred Buddhists mountains - but we'll see.
I'm not too sure what to do about National Day week. I'm afraid there may be too much traffic. Or maybe everyone will be on the free expressways and the more interesting s_l_o_w_e_r roads will be clear. Who knows about the expressways are they free all week? or just October 1? I only have one experience with free expressways - the day I picked up my bike from the City was a holiday - it was a hellish 4 hour traffic jam (even on a bike) on what would normally be a 1-1/2 hour ride.
I plan to mostly avoid expressways, but I'm not completely opposed to them if it seems they are the most reasonable way to get from A to B. I haven't yet decided if I'll be camping or not on the trip - I imagine a combination of camping and hotels. Climbing mountains will be day trips so I'd get a hotel for 2 or three days to lock up all the gear from the bike. Getting from mountain to mountain, I could imagine camping along the way.
Anyone interested in joining, pm me
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Re: October sacred Mountains trip
well I have an itinerary now. I usually don't do any planning in advance, usually just go and see where I end up. But seeing as National day week falls right smack in the middle of my time for this trip, I thought I'd better make at least a tentative itinerary and book some hotels before its too late. In the process I ended up getting quite excited about this trip. There are even a couple of nights in that I splurged for a room that's more than 200rmb/night, unbelievable.
For runs of longer than a day, I'll just pull off on to a side road and throw up a tent. I can't believe how slick this tent is compared the the last one I bought (35 years ago). Its called a "2 second tent" and sure enough, you can actually through it up in about 2 seconds. Now if its windy you'll need another 60 or so seconds to plant the tent pegs. Believe it or not, I even paid less for this new one than I did for my rigid tent pole model 35 years ago. Here's the manufacturer's instructional video, how to pitch a "2 second" tent: http://bcove.me/pm81gcme
My itinerary:
Sept 26: North HengShan, Datong, Shanxi
Sept 27: WutaiShan, Taihuan, Shanxi
Sept 30: SongShan, Zhengzhou, Henan
Oct 2: HuaShan, Xi'an, Shaanxi
Oct 4: TaibaiShan, Xi'an, Shaanxi
Oct 7: QingchengShan, Chengdu, Sichuan
Oct 9: Emeishan, Leshan, Sichuan
Oct 14: 4 days rest visiting a friend in Guilin, Guangxi
Oct 18: South HengShan, Hengyang, Hunan
Oct 20: JihuaShan, Huangshan, Anhui
Oct 21: HuangShan, Huangshan, Anhui
Oct 23: PutuoShan, ZhouShan, Zejiang
Oct 26: TaiShan, Tai'an, Shandong
Then perhaps Tianjin before heading back home
Most of these mountains are in the wikipedia link in my first post. Here is what the itinerary looks like. Well more or less, many places google map just plain refused to move off of expressways so I quite trying. I'll plot the real routes on my phone each day. If you are not blocked by the Chinese firewall, you can see it here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1OT...Qw&usp=sharing. In case you are blocked, here's a screenshot:
Attachment 18688
Meanwhile, I've been practicing by climbing this mountain out behind my house:
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The bike is almost ready to go. Just need to mount my new front tire and change the oil, then its just strap everything on and go.
Re: October sacred Mountains trip
Hi Bill
Good luck with your trip sounds very interesting I should be around the Chengdu area at the time you are passing PM me your WeChat account name and I keep in contact with you with my location.
I will be heading south from Chengdu towards the border with Laos for my winter stay in Thailand .
Not great on walking up mountain mate to old for that but I can watch lol .
Steve
Re: October sacred Mountains trip
Quote:
Originally Posted by
prince666
Hi Bill
Good luck with your trip sounds very interesting I should be around the Chengdu area at the time you are passing PM me your WeChat account name and I keep in contact with you with my location.
I will be heading south from Chengdu towards the border with Laos for my winter stay in Thailand .
Not great on walking up mountain mate to old for that but I can watch lol .
Steve
Sounds like a great way to spend your winters. OK, lets keep in touch. Of course something could come up and my Itinerary change.
Most of these mountains, being major Chinese tourist sites have cablecars at least 1/2 way to the top. But I get no satisfaction from taking a cable car to the top - I'll gladly take it down though
Re: October sacred Mountains trip
Quote:
Originally Posted by
ShuBen
My advise: stay away from any well known mountain during Oct holiday.
I see ur plan for HuaShan on hi2nd of Oct.
I was living in Xian and 10years ago even on a normal weekend it was a dangerous disaster already. Basically u better stay away from all tourist spots.
Sent from my HUAWEI P7-L07 using Tapatalk
Hmm, yes, I knew it wasn't a good idea but unfortunately that's the time I have. Maybe for Huashan I can do the night climb instead of daytime. It would still be too many people at night on Oct 2 but at least there is less likely to be people stuck in the middle of the one way path afraid to go on and trying to turn around.
Re: October sacred Mountains trip
Some local knowledge is pretty useful for those mountains. Taishan for example is hectic and horrific around the many places to ascend in Taian (south side), but if you go around to the opposite side (north side) the nature is much nicer and much quieter, although you might miss out on some of the cultural buildings.
Re: October sacred Mountains trip
Quote:
Originally Posted by
ZMC888
Some local knowledge is pretty useful for those mountains. Taishan for example is hectic and horrific around the many places to ascend in Taian (south side), but if you go around to the opposite side (north side) the nature is much nicer and much quieter, although you might miss out on some of the cultural buildings.
Great to know, I'll put that in my notes. Thanks for the tip.
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Re: October sacred Mountains trip
Well I am well into the second week of my trip now. This is just a few hundres meters form one of the 5 summets of Wutaishan:
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As some of you may have learned from other threads, I had a couple of breakdowns, but managed to get back on the road again - twice. First time was a failed shifter - I was stuck in high gear at the Bottom of a mountain valley. Being in the middle of nowhere and on the eve of National day Holiday, I got out of Dodge as quickly as I could and paid a lot of money to ship my bike 550 km to Beijing for repair. The repair consisted of a new clutch, shifter arm and selector drum - all parts in stock locally so repair complete in about 3 hours. More expense but at least I got back on the road
Attachment 18767
Because of the repair I had to skip one mountain in order to keep up the rest of my schedule. So, heeding Shuben's warning, I skipped HuaShan.
On the road, meeting other bikers taking advantage of free expressway access. (free means more than just no cost - it also means free access in provinces where motos are forbidden on expressways, since the attendants just keep the barriers open, they are not paying attention to or stopping motorcycles).
And now this interface is messing with me so I'll continue with a new post
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Re: October sacred Mountains trip
Continuing:
I made it as far as Chengdu before my moto had its second failure. This time a leaking fuel tank. with the help of Prince666 and the hotel manager (who also let me use the hotel lobby as a workspace), we quickly got a replacement tank and I was back on the road again. Here is Prince preaching to a hotel guest about the Benelli being a lemon:
Attachment 18769
Other than repairs, I can also report on what I have done for "ride prep" on the bike. Lets see, well to start with I am bringing too much stuff:
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But so far I am OK with it. Yes it is a lot of stuff to lug up to a hotel room, but I am not getting a new room every night - I stay in each room 2 nights while hiking up a mountain during the day. I need summer clothes and winter clothes because of traveling between North and south in October and because it can get cold on top of mountains. And since I am not just moto touring, I also need to bring some hiking gear - it all takes space. Also, I am camping some when it is a multi day trip between mountains - so that means a tent, sleeping bag and yoga mat. And one big heavy item is a 10 liter can of fuel. I haven't had to use it yet but it sure does ease my mind when I know I have less than 20 km of fuel left and I don't know how far is the next fuel stop. The mechanics in Beijing who fixed my bike thought it was great that had the spare fuel can with me. And actually, I have used the fuel can twice already - not to put fuel into my moto, but rather to catch it when draining fuel. First time when shipping the bike back to Beijing the trucking company needed me to drain the fuel from the moto before they put it in the truck. Next time was to empty the leaking fuel tank.
My spare tank is the 10 liter model from here: https://detail.tmall.com/item.htm?id...21&toSite=main and I pack it inside this bag https://world.taobao.com/item/533345...u=82lpis72ae3e that fits it just about perfectly. This way I can unstrap it from the bike and inconspicuously bring it into my hotel room without anyone worrying that I have dangerous items with me.
A loud horn: https://world.taobao.com/item/532205...u=72lpis726b6f I had no idea how important this would be. But I wold quite possibly be dead already if I did not have this horn. Don't leave home without it. The mounting brackets that come with it are rather flimsy though, I made new ones with some thicker stock.
extended handle bar risers: https://world.taobao.com/item/528463...u=t2dmg8j26111 This bike has too sporty of a posture for touring, these riser extenders make all the diference.
Finally, for mounting my phone to use as a GPS navigator I tried one of these: http://www.armor-x.com/x23-bar-mount...ycle-1879.html along with the case for my phone that mates to the mount. Note this website is disguised to be an american website (I assume to attract american customers) but after chatting with the sales support I found it is actually in China and they ship to China for free. Just tell them what you need, give them a delivery address in Chinese characters and they tell you the total and an alipay email address. Well the result from testing proved that the arm is not rigid enough. My phone ended up vibrating a lot and when I hit big bumps the support arm would bounce up to a vertical position. but with a foam pad on top of my moto's built in wind deflector and a small bungee cord to hold down the top of the phone, it is perfect. It doesn't bounce or vibrate at all. then I just bolted on aslightly taller afternarket wind deflector to keep rain off of my phone ; that also is working perfectly:
Attachment 18771
Before buying this, I was unsure if I should buy the China clone of a RAM mount. https://detail.tmall.com/item.htm?id...98&toSite=main After seeing Prince's mount, I think it would have actually been a better choice. Even so, I am quite happy with how this is working for me
as for a GPS app. I can't rave enough about the version of OsmAnd that Aquilegia compiled. with this app I can download the openstreetmap.org maps for all of China (which of course you can do with the regular OsmAnd). But what is really special is that I can also toggle between that and Baidu map, Sogou map and Google map. And with Aquilegia's port of this app, google map has the offset issue fixed and it loads without requirement for VPN. Find out about it in this thread on pages 5 and 6: http://www.mychinamoto.com/forums/sh...in-China/page5
Re: October sacred Mountains trip
Really looking like you are having fun. If you end up west of Yixing at any point, send me PM and you are welcome to stay at the country house and I will try and meet up with you for few miles... Glad you had some help to get things fixed and are back on the road. Keep the rubber side down.
Re: October sacred Mountains trip
the trip was completed a week or 2 ago.
I had more problems and it turned out it was because I had too much weight loaded onto the back of the bike while riding (sometimes at speed) on the bumpy Chinese roads. I really had no idea that SO many roads would be SO bad. I live in the Beijing area and am used to Beijing roads which are pretty good. Anyway, the bolts holding my back frame to the mid-frame snapped. I got new bolts, reduced my load by 15 KG, added bamboo struts to the baggage mounts and stuck to the expressways as much as I could and I had no more problems the rest of the trip.
As for details and photos of the trip, I recorded most of it in my blog so to avoid repeating the excersice I will just post links here, Unfortunately this blog is google hosted so it is not accessible in China without a VPN. Anyway, here it is:
http://china.blog.leuze.ca/2016/10/s...moto-tour.html
http://china.blog.leuze.ca/2016/10/s...ur-part-2.html
http://china.blog.leuze.ca/2016/10/s...ur-part-3.html
http://china.blog.leuze.ca/2016/10/s...ur-part-4.html
http://china.blog.leuze.ca/2016/10/s...part-5_28.html
http://china.blog.leuze.ca/2016/10/s...ur-part-6.html
Re: October sacred Mountains trip
Quote:
I really had no idea that SO many roads would be SO bad.
A very common mistake that most new riders to China make.?
But in the end you made it that is the main thing and with the expreance you have grained from this ride will stand you in a good prosition for the next ride.
Great blog
