Dec. 8th: Riding the Iron Rooster

I think it was in October that Brian, McNair and I first realized the reality of our tremendous load - venturing overland to subsist in the mountains of China's deep southwest would be an ambitious move, and it would surely require wheels. I think back to the slideshow presentation McNair and I witnessed in Jackson Hole sometime during winter of '05 / '06: Conrad Anker and Jimmy Chin had returned from an adventure of unbelievable proportions, lugging self-made pull carts with huge off-road wheels across the nether reaches of Tibet's remote Changtang Plateau. 'Sure, but they had the North Face behind that mission,' and we can only imagine the money that was at their disposal. We were to be functioning largely self-sufficiently, not to mention digging deep in our pockets to transform this dream into a reality. We left the conversation in mid-October assuming that Tibetan Boarderlands would be in need of wheels. This was for sure.



December 8: transfering trains from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, Shenzhen to Guangzhou, and Guangzou to Chengdu. We had left the wheels at home. It's not that we had forgotten them. We hadn't even created the wheel system. Perhaps we had just underestimated the total weight of our dehydrated food rations for 180 meals in the backcountry. Our train transfers ensued into one of the most physically and mentally exhausting experiences within recent memory: bags on the back, in front, in both hands, in tow. Confused Chinese eyes were upon us. 'What are these foreigners thinking?' 'Women shi dengshan de (we're going to climb mountains)' - that seemed an easy enough explanation to excuse the complete and ridiculous strain. We looked like bulls - or maybe water buffalo - but we were just two swimming through a sea of them as we pushed our way to secure luggage space in Car 14.



I'm not sure that our final lug to our bunks on the Guangzhou to Chengdu train was the most difficult feat of our days' experience, but it was surely damn tough. But we had mounted the Iron Rooster! Mounted to ride...and to ride for 41 hours we would.

-Ryan