Colette's Grand Detour

Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon lies about 40km east of Zhangjiajie City. It is a lush, deep gorge carved by the Lishui river and its tributaries. The canyon is a subtropical forested valley with steep quartz sandstone cliffs, waterfalls, caves and clear streams. It formed over hundreds of millions of years through a combination of tectonic uplift, erosion and weathering and varies in depth from 260-400m along its course. This was my first stop on a 3-day adventure exploring the Zhangjiajie scenic area.

I am in China, so of course exploring the canyon would not be a simple nature walk along the rim, or hike down into the gorge. Instead you start by crossing a 400m glass floor bridge that spans the canyon and give you great scenic views. On the opposite side, you head to a room full of swinging mini hot-air balloons, that each hold 4 people, where you put on your virtual reality headset and experience flying through the sky over the canyon.

Next it’s ‘choose your own adventure’ time. Do you want to zipline across the canyon? And then take a giant slide to the bottom of the gorge? Or just get the lift down? It was pouring with rain, so I was boring and chose the lift. I think it’s pretty strange even to have a lift in a scenic place like this. But I had no idea what was to come over the next 2 days and now a lift doesn’t seem out of place in nature at all to me.

At the bottom of the canyon you then jump on a small wooden boat for 5 minutes which takes you to a path that winds along canyon floor, following the river. The walk is extremely easy with just a few sets of stairs here and there, and even a nice little coffee shop positioned about half-way, protected from the elements by an overhanging cliff. It takes about 45 minutes to walk, at which point you get another boat for about 15 minutes to the exit.

One of the most interesting features along the canyon walk is that you can see the Southern Red Flag irrigation canal. It is carved into the rock about 30m above the canyon floor and stretches for 10km on the cliff side. It was built in the 60s and 70s as a way to capture spring water from streams on the cliff face and channel it down to agricultural fields and nearby villages. The canyon rock is mainly quartz-rich sandstone so carving a channel into relatively hard rock along the steep cliffs is really quite an engineering marvel.

In total a visit to the canyon will take 2-3 hours and as per any popular tourist destination in China, expect to do a lot of walking between places, particularly at the entrance and exit. Also visit with managed expectations. It is a deep gorge and the views are beautiful, but it is not the Grand Canyon like in the US. Tonight I am staying in the town of Wulingyuan which is the gateway to the Zhangjiajie National Park. An all-round solid first day of exploring, albeit in the rain, and I am looking forward to tomorrow.