After a month of eating various shaped noodles and dumplings across China, I started looking for an FKT route to get excited about. For such a massive country, China seems to have surprisingly few established FKT routes and really only one that fit my timeframe.
I arrived near the Tiger Leaping Gorge trailhead a day early and took the opportunity to hike part of the route. Since I was planning an unsupported effort, I spent the day before slowly hiking 10 miles of the trail, buying snacks from the various stands I’d pass the next day, eating lunch at a guesthouse and chatting with fellow hikers. This is a popular route, and half the experience seems to be immersing oneself in the whole trail scene, something I was going to miss on the FKT attempt.
The next morning, I hiked a couple of miles to the start of the GPX route. I arrived around 6:30 a.m. at what seemed like an arbitrary spot in the town of Qiaotou, snapped my start photo just as someone came up behind me on their morning walk and we both got a bit spooked. Off I went!
The first couple of miles followed what could have been a much busier, newly paved road. I eventually turned onto trail near a gravel pit. The trail quickly climbed above two new tunnels cutting through the mountains. Nothing like being above a major bridge and high speed train line!
I then wound through a stretch of singletrack that seemed to be experiencing an ecological breakdown: thousands of spiderwebs covered the trail for a good mile. More than one spider landed on me as I frantically charged through. Finally, the webs cleared near the Naxi Guesthouse and I started making my way up the well known 28 bends.
This section of trail has seen some upgrades, with several stretches paved and helpful concrete steps replacing dirt. More singletrack and big views followed as I passed the inaccurately named halfway guesthouse. The trail flattened out a bit here, becoming wider and more traveled. I started running and must have jostled my phone out of my pocket in the process.
Rounding a corner with a breathtaking view, I reached for my phone and realized it was missing. Since my phone was my only tracking device and pretty much my lifeline for getting around China, the possibility of losing it delivered a solid gut punch. I spent 10 minutes retracing my steps and found the phone in the brush.
Wow! Major crisis averted. Back to the FKT.
The next couple of miles were relatively flat, winding past waterfalls. The final stretch dropped back onto singletrack before arriving at Tina’s Guesthouse in 3 hrs 49m min and 55 seconds. A quick chug of the Red Bull I’d been carrying, along with my fourth Snickers bar made a welcome reset.
By this point of the day, the trail was insanely busy. I was a fish swimming upstream as literally thousands of Chinese tourists stopped to photograph the waterfalls while barely looking where they were going. By the time I reached the halfway guesthouse for the second time, the crowds had thinned and I seemed to have the trail mostly back to myself.
There were far fewer spider webs on the way out, and I used the final paved downhill miles to recalibrate my effort and polish off my last handful of gummy worms.
It turned into a nice full day. I finished much faster than I had expected, but there is still plenty of time for the next person to shave off.
There were enough waterfalls and streams to filter water along the way. I fueled with eight Snickers bars, two bags of gummy worms, and one Red Bull - all carried with me and purchased the day before on the trail. Finished the 28 mile route in 7 hrs 28 min and 1sec.