12.94 km on foot through one of Xinjiang’s most surreal landscapes
There are places that look spectacular in photographs, and then there are places that make photographs feel inadequate.
The Red Stone Forest near Kuqa, Xinjiang, belongs firmly to the second category.
This time, the GOHIKE team travelled far beyond the forests, mountains and coastlines we usually explore in British Columbia. Our destination was southern Xinjiang, where the landscape changes completely: enormous skies, dry valleys, exposed mountains and strange formations carved into the earth.
And somewhere among the mountains north of Kuqa, we stepped into a landscape that felt almost unreal.
A landscape of red stone.
Leaving the Road Behind
The journey begins around the G217 corridor north of Kuqa, the southern section of the legendary Duku Highway.
The broader landscape here is already extraordinary. The mountains around Kuqa are famous for their exposed sedimentary layers and red-brown cliffs, and travellers following G217 toward the Tianshan mountains encounter an almost continuous sequence of geological formations.
But walking into the Red Stone Forest changes the scale completely.
The road disappears behind you.
The formations get larger.
And suddenly you are no longer looking at the mountains from a distance.
You are inside them.
Our recorded route for the day eventually reached:
Distance: 12.94 km
Moving Time: 5:05:17
Elevation Gain: 231 m
Steps: 20,331
Temperature: approximately 26°C
It wasn't an extreme alpine climb by elevation numbers.
But numbers don't describe this terrain very well.
Walking Across Another Planet
The first impression is scale.
Huge ochre ridges rise directly from the dry ground, their surfaces covered in thousands of erosion lines. From a distance they appear almost smooth; up close, every slope is fractured, folded and carved.
Then the terrain changes again.
Rounded hills become sharp ridgelines.
Wide valleys narrow into passages.
And ordinary-looking slopes suddenly terminate in enormous walls of stone.
The colours are equally strange.
Red.
Rust.
Brown.
Pale grey.
Occasionally even muted green tones appear between the layers.
These colours are part of what makes the wider Kuqa landscape so distinctive. Geological uplift, followed by immense periods of wind and water erosion, exposed and sculpted the sedimentary rock into the formations visible today.
But standing there, geological explanations temporarily become secondary.
Because the place doesn't feel geological.
It feels architectural.
Standing on the Ridge
At one point we climbed onto a narrow ridge.
Ahead of us was an enormous wall of folded earth.
Behind us stretched a maze of eroded hills.
There were no trees to give the landscape scale. No buildings. Almost nothing familiar.
Only one person walking along the ridge.
That tiny human figure suddenly made everything else enormous.
This was probably the moment that best captured the entire hike.
Standing on the summit, surrounded by the otherworldly realm of the Red Stone Forest.
It looked less like a hiking trail and more like somewhere explorers might walk on another planet.
And yet this was Xinjiang.
Deeper Into the Stone Forest
The most dramatic formations appeared farther inside.
Here the landscape stopped resembling mountains altogether.
Instead, hundreds of narrow stone towers rose vertically from the ground.
Some were thin like needles.
Others resembled ruined castle walls.
Several formations seemed to merge together into enormous natural fortresses.
Wind and water had removed the softer material around them, leaving the harder sections standing.
Walking toward these formations produced a strange optical effect.
From far away, they seemed relatively small.
Then we kept walking.
And walking.
And they kept getting larger.
Eventually we stood directly underneath them.
Only then did their true scale become obvious.
A person at the base almost disappears.
Why Kuqa Feels Different
Travellers often associate Xinjiang with deserts, grasslands and snow-covered mountains.
Kuqa adds something else entirely.
This region sits along the southern edge of the Tianshan Mountains, where exposed rock layers have been compressed, uplifted and eroded into extraordinary shapes.
The famous Tianshan Mysterious Grand Canyon farther along the G217 corridor is another expression of this geology, with towering reddish cliffs and narrow passages. The name Keziliya itself is commonly explained as referring to the area's red cliffs.
But the open terrain of the Red Stone Forest creates a very different experience.
Instead of walking between canyon walls, you can often see the entire geological structure around you.
You walk over it.
Between it.
Around it.
And sometimes directly along the top of it.
That freedom of perspective is what made this hike special.
Five Hours in the Heat
There is another side to landscapes like this.
There is almost no shade.
At around 26°C, five hours of walking beneath the Xinjiang sun becomes very different from hiking through a forest.
Every litre of water matters.
A hat matters.
Sun protection matters.
And route awareness matters.
The open terrain can also be deceptive. From a high point, the destination may look close, while the gullies and ridges between you and it can turn a seemingly short distance into a long detour.
For anyone exploring undeveloped terrain around Kuqa, we would strongly recommend carrying more water than you expect to need, downloading offline maps before leaving the main road, protecting yourself from prolonged sun exposure, and avoiding unstable or heavily eroded slopes.
These formations have survived for an extraordinary amount of time.
That doesn't mean every piece of them is stable.
20,331 Steps Later
By the time we returned toward the road, the GPS recorded 20,331 steps.
Almost thirteen kilometres.
More than five hours moving through the landscape.
Yet the strongest memory wasn't the distance.
It was the silence.
In British Columbia, wilderness usually surrounds you with life — forests moving in the wind, streams, birds, wet ground and the smell of vegetation.
Here, the experience was almost the opposite.
Stone.
Wind.
Sun.
Distance.
That contrast made the Red Stone Forest unforgettable.
From British Columbia to Xinjiang
GOHIKE began with a simple love of being outside.
Over the years that has taken us through the forests of British Columbia, onto alpine ridges, beside remote lakes and into camps far from paved roads.
This journey took us somewhere completely different.
Thousands of kilometres from Canada, standing beneath enormous red stone towers in Xinjiang, the equipment changes and the landscape changes — but the reason for going outside remains surprisingly similar.
You walk because you want to know what is beyond the next ridge.
Then you reach that ridge.
And immediately start wondering what is beyond the next one.
That curiosity is probably why we keep travelling.
And why we keep hiking.
12.94 kilometres later, we walked out of the Red Stone Forest tired, sun-baked and completely satisfied.
There are still countless trails left to explore.
This one just happened to feel like another planet.
GOHIKE Outdoor — Keep Exploring.
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