I Hacked the Hidden Great Wall With My Smartphone—You Can, Too

Standing alone in a field in rural northeast China, I was utterly and hopelessly lost.

With a carbon hiking pole in each hand and an LED headlamp strapped to my head, I must have looked like a space alien to the farmers tending to their morning chores. An old woman with a dull hoe slung across her shoulder shot me a wild, confused stare. A group of men taking turns chopping wood glared at me until one of them shouted in harshly accented Chinese.
“What are you doing here?” one of the men asked. “Searching for the Great Wall of China,” I replied in Mandarin.

The men looked at one another with blank expressions, quickly scanning the empty ridges above to show me, without speaking, that there was no Great Wall here.

That’s when I pulled out my smartphone. Before I left on my journey to hike alone along China’s Great Wall, I tapped into an online network of travelers who had blazed their own trails along the wall, and recorded the GPS coordinates of the important turns and twists along the way. I used these strangers’ guidance to find my way to a remote, unrestored section of the wall just a few hours outside Beijing. The coordinates showed that I was nearly two miles off course, heading away from the wall and into unknown countryside. I turned around, followed the blue line on my phone’s screen, and was back on track.

For those searching for an authentic Great Wall trek far from tourists and tour guides, there is an entire infrastructure online devoted to hunting down the quietest and most remote sections. With just a little digging, I found a route that fit my schedule and skill level, complete with a digitally mapped trail leading from the neglected but hauntingly beautiful Gubeikuo section to the slightly crowded, but much more tourist-friendly Jinshanling.