The second we walked into the courtyard of the Xidang Hot Springs Guest House, the traditional starting point on the Inner Circle pilgrimage trail, Percy took my arm and said, "remember kid, what happens on the rope stays on the rope." This is a phrase Percy uses on all her climbing trips as a Seattle Mountaineers climb leader. It usually means that if someone has a minor meltdown on a climb you help them through it and don't discuss it later. At the Hot Springs however, I took it to mean, "you go ahead and pee in a bottle if you need to. The outhouse is beyond gross." The Guest House at Xidang Hot Springs was our first taste of hostels yet to come. Communal rooms without lights, heat, or running water, hard cots with well used bedding, drafty windows, floors, and doors, but it was definitely better than sleeping in a tent at a climbers parking lot (Blue Lake Trail Head anyone?). In fact, I had one of the best nights sleep of my life at the Xidang Hot Springs. The next morning we were going to start our hike into Yubeng Village. While I might have been totally out of my element in big cities like Beijing and Lijiang, hiking to a small village felt as natural to me as breathing.
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