Liangzhu Sky Stairs Ridge Walk (Kangmen Reservoir Loop)

Both GPS records start on the lane above the north shore of 康门水库, at about 36 m, at a point with no entry on any map: AMap returns nothing within 500 m of it. Worth stating plainly, because the district sends people to a car park at the dam end, 263 m away along the water, and the two are not the same place. The first few hundred metres are level ground beside the water, the kind of approach that makes people under-estimate what follows. At 685 m the path passes within 45 m of the map point named 良渚天梯, at 31 m, which you will want to know before reading that name as a landmark on the hill.

The 良渚天梯 marker sits on the lakeside walk, not the ridge: the name belongs to the whole feature, and the map pinned it to the path rather than the climb. The official accounts are consistent about what the feature is, describing the 云端步道, also called the 良渚天梯, and noting that hikers know it as the 余杭小八达岭. One thing, three names, and one of them is a nickname. Walking on, the path reaches the registered point of the 良渚文明探索步道 at 1,151 m, passing within 11 m of it: this stair path is the western arm of a 27 km corridor, and that is the only place on the whole loop where the corridor's own name is under your feet.

At the far end the line comes within 122 m of the reservoir surface and 263 m of 小八达岭停车场, the car park the district names as the start, before turning back along the western bank. Both records pass it at the same distance, which is how you know the gap is systematic rather than one walker's detour. Then the ground drops to its lowest point of the day, 21 m, at 杨氏山, which is not a hill at all: reverse geocoding files it as a village-level place name, one of several around this water. It is the second way up, and the district brief that recommends it as the start is pointing at a lane end rather than a summit.

Everything the route is graded on happens here, in about 990 m of path that leaves the shore at 33 m and arrives at 208 m. The official tips prepare you for it and under-sell it in the same breath: the steps are cut to follow the natural shape of the hill, they are steep, and after roughly ten minutes of climbing the ground eases to a thatched-roof shelter. Then it steepens again along the crest, and the stone underfoot on the way down is 高湖石, quarried blocks rather than poured concrete. The district's own summary of this stretch calls the steps steep but the view excellent, and says the whole line is low threshold and beginner-friendly. Fit enough beginners will finish it. Beginners who are not fit will sit down on those steps and reconsider.

The high point is not a summit with a name. This hill has no official peak name at all, though its neighbours do: 西尖峰 at 175 m, 东尖峰 at 160 m, 石门岭 at 208 m, 乌焦山 at 184 m, none of them the ground you are standing on. What is here is a lookout, and the district says three stand around the reservoir at about 200 m. Both walkers stopped and photographed: one took four pictures within 20 m over fourteen minutes, the other one, at the same spot. That cluster is how this page can give a coordinate for a place no map names. Look south for the 苕溪 plain, the line of the 山前长堤 and the silhouette of the Ancient City park below you, with the city far beyond.

The descent runs 1,108 m and gives most of the height back in one go, dropping through bamboo on the same 高湖石 steps, which the accounts that mention them at all describe as slippery when wet. There is no second line down and no intermediate exit: you are committing to the shore. The trail reaches the lane at about 36 m, close enough to where it began that the two records close their loops within 39 m and 97 m of the start. The reservoir is a working irrigation body built in 1960, and the grass at its edge is where weekend parties set up their tents, so the last few hundred metres are shared with families, kites and car doors.