Yuanmou Earth Forest

The dry Jinsha valley at Yuanmou has soft layered clay and gravel that rain has cut into badlands: columns, walls and spires up to about forty metres, many capped by a harder stone or concretion that shields the earth directly beneath it while the surrounding ground washes away, which is how the pinnacles form and why they are topped with hats of rock. Several areas are open, the largest at Wanbao and Xinhua, with paths threading gullies between the columns. The valley is hot and largely bare, and dawn and dusk turn the clay orange and red.

What you actually see

• The clay spires - eroded pinnacles up to forty metres tall.
• The capstones - hard rocks sheltering the columns beneath them.
• The gully paths - routes threading the maze between the walls.
• The low light - clay turning orange and red at dawn and dusk.

When to go

October to April; the valley is extremely hot from spring through summer and the rains make the clay treacherous. Dawn and dusk give the colour, and midday flattens everything.

Honest expectations

Heat and lack of shade are the main difficulty. Formations are fragile and paths eroded in places. The site is a few hours from Kunming with limited facilities.

Nearby

Panzhihua lies north in Sichuan; Kunming is south.