Think you had it tough as a kid? Chinese school kids forced toclimb 2600' ladder

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For more than a dozen children in a small, remote village in southwest China, the mountainous route home from school is long — and extremely steep.

Every two weeks, when the students, ages 6 to 15, return from boarding school, they climb a chain of 17 bamboo ladders, secured to a sheer cliff face and leading some 2,625 feet up, according to reports.

Locals say the ladders — which lead through treacherous terrain in the Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture in Sichuan province — have been there nearly as long as the village.

"We replace a ladder with a new one when we find one of them is rotten," Chen Jigu, who lives in the Atuler village, told China Daily.

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Villagers told China Daily that the trek takes about two hours going up — and 90 minutes to get down.

"When a villager is too sick to climb down the mountain," China Daily reported, "a person must tie him or her onto their back to get down the cliff with the help of two other villagers."

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