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Wednesday, January 19,
2011
"China
Odyssey"
by Lorrie
Bonds-Lopez
In 2008 Lorrie
Bonds-Lopez and her husband joined two China scholars, Rikki and
Jeff, for a 3-week hiking/biking touring trip in the southwest of
China. First they visited Yangshuo (Guangxi province) and the
surrounding countryside for mountain biking and bamboo rafting.
Yangshuo is on the Li river and is surrounded by a karst landscape
where there are hundreds upon hundreds of limestone hills dotting
the countryside. The beautiful scenery here is a common subject of
those mystical Chinese paintings as well as the inspiration for
poetry.
Next was trekking between the
guesthouses in the Longsheng Rice Terraces, and then finally to Dali
and Lijiaang via train, terminating with trekking in the Tiger
Leaping Gorge. Tiger Leaping Gorge is a contender for the world's
deepest river canyon. It is around 15 km in length, and consists of
a series of rapids under steep (2000m) cliffs. Legend has it that to
escape from a hunter a tiger jumped across the river at the
narrowest point (still 25 meters wide), hence the name.
The Tiger Leaping Gorge is a canyon carved out by the Yangtze River
in the foothills of the Himalayas in Yunnan Province, China.
At about 2000 meters deep it is one of the world's deepest river
canyons. The white building in the photo is a guest house.
From her first
wilderness expedition in Dark Canyon in 1970 to rowing an 18’ foot
raft through the Grand Canyon in 2010, Lorrie Bonds-Lopez has been a
wilderness addict. In the 70’s and 80’s she worked as a professional
for Outward Bound and in scores of other outdoor education programs
delivering 1 to 28 day wilderness experiences involving
canyoneering, mountaineering, rafting and kayaking. Her travels
include the rivers of Alaska, Canada, and the American West,
mountain ranges from Mexico to Canada and the canyons in between.
Until her first child was born, most years were spent living out of
a backpack and kayak. She went on to raise her children on a diet of
rivers and wilderness and now continues pursuits with far-flung
trips in Asia and is constantly expanding the checklist of domestic
wilderness destinations.
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