There's a lot of walking involved.

As the travelers on the chambers of commerce tour plodded upward on the snaking wonder of the world, there were complaints of aching quads.

"OK. I'm exhausted," groaned Deborah Seagle after pulling herself up the first several steep steps.

"You need a push?" her husband, Dale Seagle, asked with a laugh.

"No," the Coeur d'Alene woman replied breathlessly. "I need you to put me on your back!"

Not for the wobbly legged, is the Great Wall of China.

On Thursday, many members of the tour group turned back like disheartened Marines after sweating toward the stone expanse in the fierce afternoon light.

"It's a lot easier going down," said Coeur d'Alene resident Elaine Stevens after turning back halfway up the climb to the wall.

Contrasting their physical deficiencies was the world's military defense paradigm, the insurmountable stretch of wall undulating into a thinning thread across a vast stretch of earth. The group was visiting the youngest section of the wall, built during the Ming dynasty 500 years ago, and watchtowers stood austere, solidly intact and only dusted with grit.

Even at the base of the winding steps to the wall, lush mountainside and stone structure sprawled around the travelers.

"I can't believe I'm standing here," said Nancy Vogel of Hayden, holding her husband's hand.

An understandable sentiment.

The Great Wall, in fact a series of walls cobbled over 2,000 years, is an almost inconceivable feat of engineering, hubris, violence and perseverance. It is the result of centuries of manipulating lime and wood and earth with simple machines and slaves. Countless lives were sacrificed in building, their skeletons tossed into the layers to contribute to its mass even in death.

Standing on it, feeling warmth from the stone radiate upward, is a surreal experience.

Still, there's a lot of walking involved.

"Wow this is steep," Dale said as he stopped for a breather, glancing back over his shoulder at the steps plunging nearly straight downward.

The tour guide had warned there were two options: Difficult, and more difficult.

Even on the first option, the stone steps were immense, and irregular in proportion. Most required lifting legs waist high, others needed actual climbing, like saddle sliding over a fence.

Although the other tourists climbing beside the chamber travelers spoke different languages, they all panted the same.

"WOO!" Marilee Wallace cheered as her 81-year-old mother, Audrey Wallace, cleared the first half. "You rock, mom!"

Still, Audrey and much of the group abandoned the effort one by one.

For the fraction that made it to the top, roving the brief stretch of wall was visceral.

Veronica Garnsey said she was overwhelmed that she kept up with her husband all the way, in spite of a nagging knee injury.

"Just as we were coming back, we witnessed a local man playing the flute, and some women just started singing," the Post Falls woman said, her eyes tearing. "It was so beautiful. I don't know why, but I started bawling. It was just the coolest thing on the planet, that we got to do it, and I made it."

After Kathy Quinn and her husband, Tom Quinn, tackled the wall, the Coeur d'Alene woman had to pause to collect her thoughts.

"It was amazing. I don't think I expected it to be," she said. "But that's a lot of history. A lot of people have walked on those steps before."

Upon reaching the top, Lee Magnus and his wife, Ligia, treated others to a shot of Gentleman Jack whiskey in paper cups.

"We drank American whiskey on the Chinese wall," Lee said with a chuckle, the paper cups still clutched in his hands afterward. "Go ahead and check that off the list."

Being an Idahoan likely had a hand in their victory, Kathy said.

"It's just that we're used to going up Mineral Ridge and Tubbs Hill, just hiking," she said. "This was just a good hike."