Just back from Wolong - Balang (1 Viewer)

We've just made a trip that included Wolong/Balang - 6 days to bird a loop that took in Wolong - Balang - Baoxin - Bi Feng Xia - Wawu (in all 185 ticks).

The situation around Wolong/Balang is much better than expected - no major landslides on the hike up to Wuyipeng - the habitat here has survived the quake well - and the staff are working in the buildings at the top of the ridge and were only too glad to provide food drink and anti-leech advise (yeah the leeches are still around).

The worst damage is around the turn off from the Chengdu road up towards Sawan - and they've imposed a one day in/one day out driving rule - but this is before you get to the prime birding areas of Wolong/Balang. The rest of the road is still being completed - but parts are surfaced - and its a lot better than the mud-bath of 2007. The river is of course a sorry dredged-up mess - and that terrible destruction was pre-earthquake!!!!

Up on the Balang pass we couldn't get the Monals - but with a bit more effort I'm sure they're still around (the workers said there were pheasants - but then went and pointed at a couple of Red-collared Doves and said "look there they are.")

For more info go to my birdforum blog entry at -
http://www.birdforum.net/blog.php?b=1866

As an addition to that first post here are some pics that illustrate conditions.

The first pic shows the state of the road from the point where you turn off at Yinxiu from the Chengdu/Wenchuan road- that type of road lasts a good 30km - after which it gets a lot better. This section is very close to last years quake-center - and there is lot of damage. As you can see we drove through a heavy rainstorm - but our van had no major problems. This is the section of the road that is restricted to single file traffic. Not many foriegners are getting out this way at the moment - so expect good long stares.

The second pic shows that paths and tracks up in Wuyipeng are in decent order - although on one path (to the waterfall) - which is way beyond the buildings - we had to slide down a skree-slope to continue our trek. The reserve workers are maintaining these paths and fixing damage.

The last pic is of the the Balang road - some of which is now surfaced. This road didn't suffer major damage - and is a lot easier to drive than during 2007. Work is still going on - and distrurbance to birding continues - but again not on the same magnitude as 2007

Very interesting news - just to clarify: "one day in" means the traffic only goes one direction during one day, and then the opposite direction the other day? (which covers 30 km of road or more?) I'm not planning to go this summer, but just interested.

Gretchen

yes it does mean one day the traffic is allowed in to travel one direction and the next day the other direction. And although the realy bad part of the road is just 30 km long, the two Checkpoints that allow or stop the flow with regard to which direction traffic is allowed to to travel that day - are well over 100km apart - one being at the Wolong turn-off at Yinxiu - while the other is way over the other side of the Balang Pass at Rilong.

Hotels are still open at Rilong and around Wolong town - we were only spending 50RMB/night for basic double rooms.