A mountain trekking trip

Had never tried a serious mountain trekking before and with the warm invitation from friends, joined them for  the fun and also to have a feel on what mountain trekking is all about. I have been on regular exercise by filling my daily schedule with cycling in the evening and also morning jogging. My intention is to prepare myself for physically more demanding activities. It would be a good idea to test out how I fare physically after all this period of hard training and also is good to know the level of fitness which my other learned friends had already attained. Using their standard as a reference, then I will strive to train and excercise harder in order to cope up with them for the future more challenging expedition of high places.

The mountain selected this time was Gunung Bunga Buah  half way near to Genting Highland resort. Since we had to start off at the home of our buddy in Jalan Bunga Anggerik of Ukay Heights of Ampang at 7 am and therefore we put up a night there instead of travelling across the KL city from west to east just to avoid the usual morning traffic woes. Started the journey in Gotong Raya after our expensive breakfast which was RM9 for a plate of  "wantan mee". I suppose this place is meant for the tourists and not the local trekkers like us!

The initial climb was a very steep slope right after a local vegetable farm before reaching an abandoned tar road winding through some jungle path with tree ferns and wild orchids along the way. After a while the road was gently sloping downwards and on its side and at some high point of the edge, one could take a view of the peak of Gunong Bunga Buah. We finally reached the end of the road and waited for the arrival of all the climbers before we get ready to take another ascend. The path at the waiting spot there was covered with many dried leaves, after the rain of previous night, leeches were active and they were ever ready to stick onto any of  our shoes or legs. We brought along repellent spray, on seeing all the approaching leeches and we decided this was the place where we should spray a protective coat over our shoes, socks , shirts and the exposed parts of our limbs.

The climb and the descend of this second hill was smooth after our warming up stretch just before this. But the muddy trek, fallen tree trunks and the roots were obstacles that we had to overcome in order to push our journey further up. The roots of the trees and some of the paths were slippery and therefore the kind of climbing shoes worn that gave the maximum grip would be important for this type of terrain. We stopped occasionally for a drink to keep our body hydrated and sometimes leeches dropped themselves from the leaves when they sensed the movement and noise. It was a leech infested forest  but I was lucky to be spared of not even a single bite. Most of us had managed to discover and get rid of them just before they about to take on a sumptous suck!

We continued the climb and passed through a small rock garden as we about to reach the peak and took a view of the surrounding mountainous range which was simply scenic! We scaled the mountain for another 40 minutes before reaching the top. It was misty at the peak and the view was partially shrouded by the fog. We had our lunch here with the provisions that we brought along. We finished off most of the water and left some for the returning path and our load and thus the weight was very much reduced for the descending journey.

The descending along the same path which we climbed up was pleasant and the toughest was now the stretch of ascending back and up the second hill. We were in good spirit and wanted to complete the descend in 2 hours compared with the more strenuous climbing up of about 2 hours and 45 minutes. The actual descending time took us probably in the region of 2 hours and 15 minutes.

There was an unforeseeable incident happened on the way down hill, a couple was lost in direction and one of my buddies trekked backward and went to look for them. Together with another guy from another, they finally found them and the delay was 2 hours from the original finishing schedule of 3 pm. From this event, I would be able to judge the fitness level of this buddy, he could back trek for another 2 hours without any problem after a total non-stop uphill and downhill of 5 hours! I really need to train harder in order to be in par with him on stamina and strength!

It was also an important lesson to learn that no matter how simple and straight forward a trekking trail appears to you, one should never underestimate and rule out the possibility of getting lost in direction. Therefore it is a good habit to mark the trail with papers along the way and also carry along a GPS system and an extra set of mobile phone battery as spare.

This was my first trekking trip and the next day the muscle of both of my thighs was pulling and painful while walking down the steps of staircase. It is hard to say that I really enjoyed the process of climbing such a tough and muddy mountain filled with leeches,  but the feeling when the climb was over and that you had conquered a mountain, the joy of satisfaction and the sense of accomplishment of  how your body could withstand and overcome the challenge is just beyond the description of words!

My next target would be Gunong Nuang in Hulu Langat!