To ease the access to the wall, there are several lanes of open-air gondolas (cabriolets) that ferry visitors up to the parapet and back. There is also a shuttle car that will take you uphill and a chute that will take you downhill considerably faster than you came up. For those who are up to it, Heavenly Ladder is a special staircase with an 80-degree gradient that leads up to Watching Beijing Tower and Fairy Maiden Tower. It narrows to a mere 50 centimeters near its top, so, what with the steep gradient combined with the narrowness, the faint-hearted are urged to opt instead for one of the mechanized forms of transport.
There is also a "rope" bridge (don't worry, it's made of iron!)across the valley (it is suspended over Mandarin Duck Lake) that connects the two subsections of Simatai Great Wall, as well as a cable on which you can slide across the valley if you are looking for a bit of bungee-jump-like excitement. There is also a boating service on the very placid Mandarin Duck Lake, the farther end of which offers the spectacular macro view of a dragon leaping out of either side of the lake, i.e., the subsections of the wall that snake up the ridges of the two mountains on either side of the lake.
The western side of the lake is ideal for picnics and the like. In fact, several annual events related to the Great Wall are held here, in which international visitors are invited to participate, including the Simatai Great Wall International Gliding Festival in the month of June, the Great Wall Cultural Festival in the month of August, and the Great Wall Climbing Tournament in September.
Quite possibly, Simatai Great Wall is the most spectacular and most aesthetically pleasing section of the Great Wall of China, taking both the macro and micro views into consideration, as the 1987 UNESCO recognition of Simatai Great Wall as a World Cultural Heritage Site also suggests.
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