GUNUNG PANTI: A FAILED MISSION.

This tree was uprooted, but along with the rock.

Looking for the right path is no easy task

Everthing was planned for our trip to explore gunung Panti from the other side. Through the palm oil plantation at lukut on 28^th august 2011. I was to meet my friends in front of the Lukut police station at 7.30am Then on saturday morning I was informed to be in at the plant to receive the tankers, as it is almost the raya holidays and since their non muslim drivers are only available on sunday. There goes my hiking plan . I sent a message to my friends to not to wait for me as I was not sure if I could make it, but they were so gracious and asked what time I could get off and were prepare to wait for me. So I set the time at 10.00am and made arrangement with the transporter to be at the factory at 5.00am and the whole operations was completed at 9.30am. I drove like a F1 driver as I had to be at the destination by 10.00am and the journey will normally takes about 45 minutes to an hour depending on the speed and traffic. I had never been late for an appointment and I don't intend to break my record. Thank goodness when I got there my friends had not arrived yet.

I parked by car at the road side and went to one of the stall selling goreng pisang or something. Since it was not open for business yet, I help myself to one of the chair . Had time to check some mails, facebook before they finally showed up a few minutes later. Only Eric and Chris came, they rest must have ffk or deceived to drop out at the last minute.

We droved for about half through some kampung(villiage) area through some not so good road .I was thinking if only I had my 4 wheel drive. My son had gone back to our home town with my car, and since I had to be around during the long holidays to keep an eye on the factory with most of the staffs away, I was driving the other car a kancil,the malaysian car. It was not very comfortable driving through those road condition. Anyway we finally reached a point where it was not possible to drive further and we had to leave our vehicles and continue our journey on foot. This side of the mountain was practically unknown and not many people had hike from this side. There were hardly any markers and there don't seems to be any visible sign of any kind of track, and the continuous rain for the past few days had make it worst. Only Eric had been here before and we had to rely solely on him to find the correct path. We followed closely to his intruction and used some old newpaper to marked our route as we explore deep into the unknown.Each time it was a deadlock.We seems to goes in circles , and at times we thought we found the correct trail only to find out it was a false trail. After more than two hours we decided to call it quit. Puting the marker was easy but trying to look out for them was quite a task. I felt like Hazel and Gretel trying to find their way back . The only difference was they left bread crumb along the way,while we use old newspaper, where the birds could not eat and thus we found our way out of the woods.
 Perhaps we could go by the forest reserve way and work ourselves down to this trial to find our create new route .

Our failed mission will not deters us.Yes we were disappointed, but we will not give up . We will be back.

A LEISURE HIKE AT GUNUNG PULAI

Got a call from  a friend and also a member of southern hikers, she asked if I was free on sunday afternoon as she wanted to hike in preparation for her future trip to Nepal. So I agreed. Though the weather was no too favourable and it looked like it was going to rain, but since she came all the way from Johor Baru and not to disappointed her I agreed to proceed with her plan. And besides being a season hikers we had our ponchos handy when it rained.
 At first we went through the stream to hike on the mountain trail, but after the 2nd tier we could not find the trail due to heavy rain for the couple of days earlier and also the path was slippery and so we cut across another stream to continue on the tared road leading towards the army base. But  after an hour or so we had to make our way down as it was getting dark, and it looks like it was going to rain. Further more it was almost dinner time and down we went and went to a nearby restaurant for our dinner.

water fall on first tier

2nd tier

3rd tier

dark sky, threatening to rain

HIKERS TO TABUR WEST BEWARE

Please be informed that the rope at the " FIRST ROPE " spot in Bukit Tabur West was dismantled, the rock on top was also loosen. 

Please be careful, kindly spread the message among yr friends for the benefit of trekkers. Let's do prevention effort as this is accident prone spot. Received this warning for Agnes tan of trekkers here

HIKER'S CHECK LIST FOR DUMMY

Just a simple check list with some basic items needed on a simple hike. It's better to come prepared.

1) Hand gloves
2) Pancho,raincoats, biker's rain gear would be much better
3)salt, salt spray against leeches
4)insect repellent
5)sunblock
6)Water proof pouch (sealable)for your phones, camera etc)
7)knee guard

hand gloves

knee guard

Motorist rain coat

poncho