Qingshan Classic Loop (Huanzhe Trail, Yuhang)

Start where the district says to start, at 青山村生态绿地, the sloping meadow of installations the village calls 青山之弦, or at the 大草坪 car park 150 m above it, where the race photographs are taken and where the record behind this map begins. Either way the first two kilometres are the approach every visitor to this village walks, and this route is the one that leaves it. The line drawn here dips first toward the library and comes back up, because the walker whose track became this map went to look at it; that detour is 887 m long and belongs to the other page. At 2,037 m the lane reaches 燕子坞水库, the smaller of the two reservoirs, bamboo close on three sides, the last water before the climbing.

Longwu Reservoir (Huanghu, Yuhang) appears at 2,792 m, the painted band along its wall visible across the water. This page touches the dam and leaves it: the reservoir is drinking water for this part of the district, which is why the village is famous, and the 4 km route tells that story properly. What matters here is narrower. The flat ground ends at the far side of the wall, the water is not for wading or swimming or a dog, and from where the path turns away the route climbs 1.7 km without anything level again. Fill the bottle here if you can, because there is nothing above.

This is the climb the route is graded on: 1,651 m of path from 108 m at the dam to 320 m at the summit marker, the tread turning from shaded bamboo to bare earth as it goes. At 3,103 m you pass 三号瞭望塔, the only one of the three numbered towers that exists on a map, and the place where the visitor accounts' claim of a view over bamboo and water lands. The second half steepens. The top is not a point but a bench some 250 m long reading 320 to 353 m, and the name above it, 牛角尖顶, sits 117 m to the east and is filed in a different county, because this ridge is the boundary between 余杭 and 德清.

The route goes down before it goes up again, and this is the section that tells you what the loop is. From the bench the path drops to a col at 87 m, 5,763 m along, and the temple that names the col stands beside it: 瑞六禅寺, founded in the Sui dynasty, re-opened in 2000 when the hermitage there was upgraded, its address registered in 交界村. The map puts it 39.6 m from the line, close enough that you will walk past the gate. A walker's marker named 卫生间 sits 24 m from that gate, the only suggestion of a toilet on this route. Then, 161 m further on at 5,924 m, another pin reads 大环右转，小环左转: big loop right, small loop left. That is where the 4 km route peels off, and the honest place to decide that the ridge is enough for today.

From the col the route turns west and climbs again, 1,455 m of path and about 300 m of height, and this is the band the district's own description calls technical, its words being that the line does not lack technical sections and has safety ropes fixed along them. One other trace of that claim exists anywhere. The second record carries a marker named 拉绳子, pull on the rope, at 30.492486, 119.838150, and 116 m beyond it a pin reading 向上, up. Nobody knows who put a rope there or whether it is maintained: a short steep handhold may exist, and you must not plan on it. Reverse geocoding gives the name 岩山 to the whole western stretch, a village-level name rather than a summit, which is why 岩山遥望石 and 螺丝山 cannot be pinned to anything. The crown has no name at all, and reads just under 400 m.

The last third of this loop is one continuous descent, 3,361 m in which the ground falls from just under 400 m back to the 76 m of the village, and it is the section tired legs should be warned about. The line drops the western flank toward the 长丘畈 hamlet, the tread a mix of earth and old stone that the district counts as 古道, and that turns slippery when wet. At 9,969 m it reaches the 茅草园 lawn, its guesthouses and its restaurant, and the last 610 m is village lane back to the car park. The record this map is drawn from ends 1.8 m from where it began.