Rachel's Memories: September 2009

Every now and then, the siren calls and the next thing I know, I've agreed to go for a climb.

I have climbed Gunung Angsi once in 2007. It was my very first climb and I remembered suffering a lot. We went via the Ulu Bendol way and the rain lengthened our entire climb.

This time, 16 of us went via Bukit Putus.

We started our climb at 8.27am. It was steep for the first 20 minutes and I was out of breath within the first 10. Golly, I was thinking to myself that if this continues, I would not have enough strength by the end of the climb. It reminded me a little of the KFC in Gunung Ledang (although KFC felt like it was never ending)

We rested for a little while here.

The trail got easier after that.

Then it was uphill again, though not as steep as before.

Because I haven't been on this particular trail before, I wasn't sure where I was or how far before we reach peak. Aunty Chris said, "Don't worry. When we see KG coming down, you'd know that the peak isn't far away".

We continued climbing up and suddenly, we saw KG and a few others ahead. Hurrah! We have reached the summit in about 2 hours. Aunty Chris was pretty surprised because she expected to be climbing for at least another 1/2 hour or so.

Within another 10-15 minutes, the rest of the group appeared. We rested for a while, makan and minum, caught our breath before being called to sing the national anthem, "Negaraku" as it was Merdeka day for us. Someone so rajin, brought the Malaysian flag.

We even had a Merdeka cake, made by Aunty Chris (but I can't remember who susah-susah carried it up) specially for this climb. The words "Happy Merdeka" was suposed to be on it but we didn't think the icing could withstand the heat.

After filling our stomachs, we had a little song session led by Joo Tatt. There were 8 songs there but we only sang 7. Most of them were lively malay songs which required dancing and action. :-)

We spent about an hour on the summit and descended at 11.33am.

For me, going down was not much of a problem. My shoes are good, but Aunty Chris kept saying that it's slippery. Perhaps I should introduce her the Columbia shoes I wore.

During the descent, some were in front of us and some were at the back. KG, Aunty Chris, Pat Gan and I were together when KG wanted to take a different route. Because the entire climb was short, we decided that it was no harm trying another route back, thinking that it would not make much of a difference where time is concerned.

We were wrong. We had do a lot of climbing and at one point, we though we have strayed from the main mountain and moved on to another. We thought of turning back but decided that we still had time.