As far as I am aware the zipline no longer operates, I could be wrong, however, when I was there in May 2019 it looked as if it was all closed. The zipline is accessed from the walkway leading from the pay kiosk. That is if you choose not to take the cable car you would have to walk to the wall, close to the top is the zipline, on the left and it is suspended across the gorge to the other side of the river that feeds into/out off Gubei Water Town. You will need to go through Gubei Water Town to get to the pay kiosk. As stated, I think it is closed as I saw no activity on the other side of the gorge, there is buildings and parking areas but nobody was there.

Hi, I did ask about it but was told that it has been discontinued. Similarly, hiking between Simatai and Jinshanling is no longer possible. However, I strongly propose to visit the GW @ Simatai as it is the only section that is lit in the evening. Wall visit must be scheduled for the evening.

We visited Simatai in April. We are older persons, me having a bad knee so balance is vital & one of my other friends has alot of physical restrictions. We did not think that we would go further than the cable car but found it easy to walk to the lookout, it is flat as other post has stated. Once you get off the cable car you and your mom can gauge it from there as we did & very happy with ourselves. We took good head lamps & with all the other people who had torches, etc the path was good to walk back down in the dark. Also other people doing the walk were so considerate of our slowness & didn't push us along. Hope this help

I agree with Vishal280's response. I don't know if you can get there by public transportation from Beijing. I had a car, and if I remember correctly, it was about 2 hours on divided highway. The hardest part was getting out of Beijing.

I would skip the Forbidden City and go to the Temple of Heaven or the Lamasery instead. The Lamasery has the advantage of being by one if Beijing's most interesting Hutongs,where you can have a bite to eat and peek into the shops along the street. The Forbidden City was a huge disappointment. It's crowded, and honestly not that much to see. The lamasery has an 80 meter tall Buddha and lots of really interesting temples to explore, and the Temple Of Heaven feels more personal and has more to fascinate you than Forbidden City. I am not sure about the Simitai section of the Great Wall, but you wouldn't want to see any of the Great Wall at night- you really need to see all around, the views of the mountains and the way the Wall snakes over them off into the impossible distances, to get the sense of perspective. I did the Jinshanling section. We did not take a cab but hired a car for the day through our hotel with a guide- it's very cheap. But if all you hve is the option of the night time tour- do it. When will you get the chance again? From Beijing, its about an hour and a half drive to the Great Wall. so hopefully you can be there before sunset. I wish you had more time there; we loved Beijing. But we were totally disappointed by the Forbidden City and got out of there as soon as we could.

Hi, it was possible to do this journey when we were there in March.. thanks

I don't know how long it is and how long time ☺️ we hiked as far as we could, turned around and hiked back to our starting point. We spend about 7 hours hiking in total. Hiking from the road to the wall takes about 30 minutes in itself

Not at present. I wanted to watch the sunset but I just missed it as they closed just before sunset. You are allowed entrance for around 2-3 hours, They have time slotted entrances. They shut around 4.30/5pm.