Kumtag Desert Scenic Area
Trail photos
Author
Trail stats
- Distance
- 3.49 mi
- Elevation gain
- 335 ft
- Technical difficulty
- Moderate
- Elevation loss
- 266 ft
- Max elevation
- 1,403 ft
- TrailRank
- 50
- Min elevation
- 1,094 ft
- Trail type
- One Way
- Moving time
- one hour 5 minutes
- Time
- one hour 27 minutes
- Coordinates
- 893
- Uploaded
- April 30, 2018
- Recorded
- April 2018
near Shanshan, Xinjiang (China)
Viewed 785 times, downloaded 1 times
Trail photos
Itinerary description
Desert hike
Amazing desert with moving sands stretching till horizon.
This hike was done in a typical Chinese truistic spot. Basically you paying 30RMB to access the desert via small plaza surrounded by vendors.
Once in a desert area you are further surrounded by vendors offering you rides on buggies, quads (you will drive but one of the staff will seat behind you), and camels - all those would take you into the sand banks.
You have also an option to take a small electric shuttle bus that would take you for a loop ride between the dunes on a narrow but paved road.
None of those are up to my taste so i just venture for a hike up the tallest hill i could see within 30 min hike distance.
It was a pleasant hike and for some time i was indeed walking on what in some moments felt like untouched soil. It was especially interesting to see mini land slides (10mm thick, few m2 in area) at each step while walking the ridge.
Some tourist might find it annoying to see s loud V6 buggy with bunch of tourists speeding through the dunes. I found it bit disturbing when one of those drove no more than 2m of a small girl who was playing with balloons and wasn't really paying attention to the car.
Driving back towards Turpan we took small road south of Flame Moubtains and along the edge of the desert where we saw some interesting cliffs / rocks that formed a backdrop to the juicy grapes plantations. It seems as it was also possible to enter a desert through those formations which would make a much nicer hike compared to the touristic spot we entered, but we had a lot on our schedule for that day and decided to continue our drive.
Amazing desert with moving sands stretching till horizon.
This hike was done in a typical Chinese truistic spot. Basically you paying 30RMB to access the desert via small plaza surrounded by vendors.
Once in a desert area you are further surrounded by vendors offering you rides on buggies, quads (you will drive but one of the staff will seat behind you), and camels - all those would take you into the sand banks.
You have also an option to take a small electric shuttle bus that would take you for a loop ride between the dunes on a narrow but paved road.
None of those are up to my taste so i just venture for a hike up the tallest hill i could see within 30 min hike distance.
It was a pleasant hike and for some time i was indeed walking on what in some moments felt like untouched soil. It was especially interesting to see mini land slides (10mm thick, few m2 in area) at each step while walking the ridge.
Some tourist might find it annoying to see s loud V6 buggy with bunch of tourists speeding through the dunes. I found it bit disturbing when one of those drove no more than 2m of a small girl who was playing with balloons and wasn't really paying attention to the car.
Driving back towards Turpan we took small road south of Flame Moubtains and along the edge of the desert where we saw some interesting cliffs / rocks that formed a backdrop to the juicy grapes plantations. It seems as it was also possible to enter a desert through those formations which would make a much nicer hike compared to the touristic spot we entered, but we had a lot on our schedule for that day and decided to continue our drive.
Waypoints
Photo
965 ft
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