Brix rambles- I’ve never appreciate a dam as much as I did today. Seven of us made a prompt decision whilst drinking in a pub on one fine day.

Without any hesitation, we’ve decided to conquer the Bukit Tabur. There were many scary stories about the place due to lots of incidents hence some chicken out. We started our journey at 0830, the starting point looks a bit off, but it is definitely a hiking trail! Along with excitements and joy, keep moving and we finally reached the first top checkpoint in half an hour. We could see the Klang Gates dam and the city view. Phew.. Warm up has just begun and we found out that the peak that we currently standing at was just the beginning of the journey!

There are 12 check points throughout the journey. It got tougher as we climbed, especially when we faced the combinations of ascend and descend on the 90 degree vertical rock faces (without harness). It was very thrilling as I have not done outdoor rock climbing. Dennis was telling me the climbing skills of 3 point stance where the two hands and a foot or two feet and a hand. That sounds easy but not at all when you’re actually up.  From second to the 11^th check points was not easy at all. There were stunts were you need to walk around the massive stone, which located right on top of the hill with no any safety guidelines given other than following exactly what the person in front did. However, there were stunts where you need to descend by using the rope that has been provided. Descending is one of my hardest/ challenging stunt as we could not actually see our footsteps while descending and yet we ought to place our weight on the loose rope. Reason being, we only given a little space to rest our foot and it was shallow and we have to place our next given step at way below, which was far out reached my capability and it was pretty hard for people like me with short leg. That was one of the scary moments where your heart pounding fast as you has no good control of your feet and hands. But all thanks to Andros whom has been helping all of us while descending.

I was pretty much exhausted and I could possibly crawl on the ground as I am not fit enough to complete such an adventurous hike. The moment you thought the difficult stunt was over, the next challenging one will just be there right after you’re done with the previous one. I was glad to have Dennis walked in front of me, pretty much a wise decision made. Especially the 90 degree “elevator” climb! Honestly, without him pulling me up, I’ll be pretty much not able to move and probably tear as I was a fearful climb, not to forget the obstacles like ascending the huge rocks that blocked my views and lots more. Another friend of us, Jerry, was really funny, as he was sharing the batman stories to us of how he managed to jump over the edge by letting go the rope and not being afraid of death! LOL. Pretty good entertain buddy, without him I guessed the entire hiking journey would be stress and tense.

Everytime when we reached the top, we will not hesitate to look back. The view was spectacular! I’d prefer the lush nature on one side and the concrete jungle on the other not to forget the Bkt Tabur’s east side, known as the extreme stunt. As we keep going, we realised that the majority of the trees at the peak have think bark, pretty amazing as we don’t get to see that in the city.  As I totally enjoyed every piece of nature that we’ve seen uphill like quartz and all kinds of leaves. We skipped the 12^th centre point as we were pretty worn out, the journey of walking down was not as difficult as climbing up, just that we need to watch our footsteps as we walked down the hill, it was a bit muddy and slippery. There were many rocks with green algae, which are not very friendly for the hikers. Hence, we constantly need to look for some good branches to step on as it is safe. We got so tired as we have to keep walking down the trail and find the way out. The interesting part was seeing the “KLUB” vouchers along the trail, and we know that’s the right way out.

We took approximately 4 hours to finish the entire journey. And the most amazing part of the trail was the rain dropping. I love walking in the rain, well it may not be good for me as it caused the soil to be more slippery, yet I am not complaining it. I just can’t remember when was the last time I walked or played in the rain. It drew a very good ending for us, and I just didn’t want the rain to stop.

-Brit-