What to do during the spring festival celebrations? One option is of course to visit one of the Beijing parks, where they have large spring festival fairs. Its crowded, and seen once is enough for me. The other option is to go out of city. As it is still quite cold outside (subzero temperatures), a trekking on frozen river seemed like a great idea. At least for me. White river ice hike was organised by Beijing Hikers, and they are really nice agency – mostly catering to western clientele. And this trip would be quite difficult to do by yourself – especially if you are without a car, or don’t want to backtrek a long distance.

White river (don’t know about the real name, maps say Bai river) is a smaller river in the mountains north of city Miyun – altogether its a two hours drive from Beijing. Road goes over the hills, passes a smaller ski resort and its quite twisty. After the arrival to the starting point we were given mini shoe crampons and walking poles. Though i opted not to use walking poles, as the walk was flat and usually there they just bother me.

We start walking at quite popular summer spot, which has seen a lot of construction in the last years. They built summer houses, and i have to admit that everything looks a bit chinese kitschy and not very attractive to me. But it could be an option to cool off from the summer heat. This first part is actually quite un-interesting as everything that surounds you is grey and road is quite boring. After almost 2km we finally arrive closer to river – to a spot where we can remains of the last year floods. Plenty of cars (now frozen in water), even bus is there. River was really high and strong to bring all of this. Unfortunately there are also plastic bags on almost every bush or tree. Yep, river was high. The shores of this river are also popular with movie crews – there are plenty leftovers of movie sets. They build whole villages (just fronts), apparently they filmed also a movie about ancient paitings in caves. And there are some trees with bright green plastic leaves. Its interesting that nobody told them to clean up, i guess that was out of options… so everything is still here. Including all the trash.

We have to cross the river several times, mostly over quite thick ice. It looks like it is around 15-20cm thick on most parts – of course not everywhere is safe to walk over it. And on some places its completely transparent, so you can observe rocks and fish (yes, swimming!!!) under the ice. The mini-crampons that we were given at the start i used only once, i decided not use them – it was more fun not to. On several parts river was completely frozen, just because it is winter, everything was completely grey (and a bit brown) around the river. So contrast with white river was strong 😉

The trekking (i would rather say a pleasant walk) was 11-12km long. Quite a lot, and plenty of this was on the ice. A really nice day as a whole. I completely forgot, yes, it was COLD! Very cold, with wind howling around our ears.