Buy the magazine, that's why it's on the cover. Cool photo of Lynn Hill inside the thing. IMMENSE CAVE. Yeah, it really is THAT big. Quite the place for sport climbing, hard to believe.
Article says the Chinese have flown a fighter jet through there. (Could you imagine being multiple pitches up that thing, hanging upside down on the roof when a fighter jet comes ROARING through the thing, OH BABY!! The rest of the region looks quite interesting, for climbing, as well.
Haven't been there, yet. China is very high (Maybe second on list) on my want list of climbing destinations though. Sooooo much untapped potential there. An enourmous country which has only seen the climbing potential scratched. Talked to one (talented) climber who was there for two years, with lots of time to climb in between working. He said he had climbed in areas with whole valleys of 1000'+ sheer walls, all of which had never seen an ascent. Like bagging first ascents in the US in the fifties, only with much better gear and technique.
"Climbing" magazine features an article on the same formation this month as well. (Actually can't remember if the photo of Lynn Hill was in Rock and Ice or Climbing)
Hope all those first ascents aren't all nabbed before I get around to making it over there, lol. As long as the Chinese don't get as climb crazy as us, first ascents should be good for the next hundred years or so.
Daydreaming.....Start at the front of the cave, climb up to the apex of the roof, then climb all the way out the top of the roof to the other end, turn the lip, and then finish up the face at the other end. An inverted big wall, or the sport climb of the century?
My body hurts just thinking about the endurance required to climb that thing. Inspires the imagination though....
Don'tchya think the Chinese have known about this hole in the wall fer some time ? Maybe not enough to get up there and send like monkeys but they're too busy flyin' a fighter jet through the thing and building factories to ship material goods to North America.
Let us know!