Children scale 800-meter cliff on way to school

Fifteen children regularly use a rattan ladder to scale an 800-meter cliff on their way to and from boarding school every two weeks in Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture in Sichuan province.

The children, aged 6 to 15, belong to 72 families in Atuler village in Zhaojue county. The villagers go to the nearest market several kilometers away once a week using the same ladder to buy necessities and sell agricultural products, mainly pepper and walnut.

The ladder is a chain of 17 smaller ladders tied together, some even perpendicular and fixed to the cliff with steel bars or timbers. There are no safety measures. A villager in his 40s fell off the cliff and died not long ago.