本帖最后由 treker 于 2010-10-23 19:42 编辑 Day 1(April 20), 16km, Camping 5192m It was a truck with a full load of iron wastes, arriving in Jieshan Daban at 6'o clock in the morning. It was still night and extremely cold and dark. Driver was not bothered to pop his head out of the driving cab. I climbed up on the top of the iron wastes, taking my bicycle down. In a hurry, I punched my old water bag. Fortunately I had another MSR water bag given by a friend of mine otherwise I would definitely fail without even starting my journey. For the first time for me to set up the brand new tent in strong, cold winds. It would be impossible to do so if the tent was not a whole piece. Extremely cold outside, about -15C, might be lower than that, I put my head into the sleeping bag but was nearly suffocated to death, honestly. The smell of Dingding's sleeping bag was, lol, so extraordinary. I woke up around 11 o'clock. There were still strong winds outside so that I had to use my bodyweight to keep the tent in place. At the time when I just started to cook and eat, four patrolling soldiers approached me. To their surprise someone, in this season, camped in Jieshan Daban. I was so nervous and afraid they were the people to block my journey because I was caught and deported from the desolate land last year. Luckily the four soldiers did not know my destination and were very kind to me. After they left, I immediately packed my stuff and pushed my bike into the depths of the unpopulated area just in case anything unexpected happened. The bike was very heavy due to the provisions and hard to control. There was even a quite small hill that I had to remove my bike panniers to get over it. This really struck me because this happened even the path was still the hardship one at the moment and I could not imagine what I would do once I entered the uncertain, endless wilderness. Until now I had not met anyone, even the nomadic pastoralists. I remembered there were quite a few of them roaming at the edge of the northern Tibetan plateau last year. All of these indicated it was not the good pasture season in such low temperature and strong winds. Around 16km there was a sheep cote, where I passed it last year, east of Lungmu Co. I was exhausted at this point so that I decided to camp in here and to rest my head. After arranging tent everything I went out to look for the wetland discovered by Duola and Liumeng last year. I was determined to find it. There were many hot springs in the wetland which were underground water with a constant temperature. The wetland therefore became an ideal habitat for some fishes and weeds under such harsh weather, which was the very unique land feature of terrain in this over 5200m highland. Perpetual snow in the valley blown to corn shape by strong winds This wetland was discovered by Duola and Liumeng. The workers at a nearby mine did not know it and I too missed it last year Underground water with a constant temperature, an ideal habitat for some fishes and weeds under such icy weather |