11-Jul-2012 -- This is the 4^th out of 20 confluence points that I reached on a bicycle trip to the North-East of China. The narrative of the trip starts from 41°N 117°E.

On the 8^th day of the trip, we started cycling in the morning about 100 km south-east of the confluence. The only bigger town we came through this day was Línxī (林西). In the later afternoon we approached this confluence, passing through Xīnlín (新林镇) in 7 km distance and then reaching the nearest point to the road at 2 km distance. From there, we considered several options, going cross-country straight to the point, following some little tracks or continuing on the main road for a bit. We choose the last option, thereby reaching the village Bāyīcūn (八一村, which means Village 8-1). From there we took some agricultural tracks which were discontinued so that we had to traverse a deep canyon. I probably do not need to describe our approach here in detail, since it was all but optimal. After cruising around for almost an hour, we left our bikes at 1.1 km from our goal and hiked over hilly grasslands.

The confluence is almost at the top of a hill (35 m from the top) with a grass cover. At the top, we had views in all directions.

Notable was that all the hills around the confluence and the confluence point itself had rows of holes (西场村) in the ground. It turned out that these holes were dug as a plantation of young trees (poplar trees or some related species). So the confluence point is subject to change within the next years. Let’s see.

We reached the nearest place to stay overnight just in time with the last fading daylight. Since it had rained all night, the road conditions were terrible.

CP visit details:

• Distance to a public road: 2100 m (turnoff at 2600 m)
• Distance to a track: 1100 m
• Distance to a footpath: 400 m
• Duration of the hike to reach the CP: 40 minutes
• Distance of bicycle parking: 1100 m
• Distance to houses: 1500 m
• Time at the CP: 18:36 PM
• Measured height: 1031 m
• Minimal distance according to GPS: 0 m
• Position accuracy at the CP: 3 m
• Topography: hilly
• Vegetation: grass, flowers, young planted (poplar?) trees
• Weather: cloudy, 25° C (felt temperature)
• Given Name: The Tree Planting Confluence

Story continues at 45°N 118°E.