|
My 'library-mate' Kee Hoong asked me weeks before the exam if I would like to join him and other friends for a hiking trip to Mount Nuang. I was a little reluctant to join because the hiking trip was right after the last ACCA paper and I was afraid that I wouldn't have done well and thus the trip wouldn't be enjoyable. Furthermore, the last time I went on an outdoor adventure was almost 6 months ago to Skytrex Bukit Cahaya. Nevertheless I went with them.
Brought the following to Mt Nuang:-
1) GPS unit
2) 1.5 litre water
3) 1.5 litre 100 plus
4) Energy bars
5) Torch lights
6) Lighter
7) Whistle
8) Towel
9) Logbook
Met up in college at 5a.m and we started our journey to Nuang, I was leading the way using my GPS device but because I was not familiar with the road, we ended up taking few diversions. Seems like GPS = Guna Pun Sesat.
Click read more to read the rest of the story (and how it almost became a survival trip)
The first part of the trip was the 'never ending gruesome road'. Such was the name because it was never ending and you could climb up 100metres and descend a further 70metres. The road was very wide because it was a logging trail.
The logging trail.
Along the way, I tracked down our coordinates and altidude on my GPS device, satellite reception was perfect with PDOP (Dilution of Precision) of less than 2.0 most of the time.
Taking down GPS coordinate
Sensonic N520
Walk for about an hour plus and you would reach the first camping site.
Then this is where you really enter into the jungle, the trail is very narrow and could only fit one person at a time, it's very slippery as well. There's some rivers to cross as well. 3 if I'm not mistaken.
All you need to do is to ensure you follow the ribbons tied on the trees, if you do not see the ribbons after a while, high chance you could be taking the wrong path.
Narrow trail
And it becomes steeper as you ascend.
Eventually you will reach Kem Sungai Lolo, another camping spot, from here, keep going and you will reach Kem Pacat.
At Kem Pacat, we all took some break.
All of us taking a rest at Kem Pacat, and there's me taking GPS readings and recording them on the logbook.
Eventually we kept on moving and reached Puncak Pengasih, the so called 'false summit'
From here, it's another 1 hour + to the real summit but it was already 3pm, which means we took a good 8 hours reaching here. Doing the math I knew that it's best that we descend now but my other friends insisted on proceeding to the real summit. Eventually another friend could not go on as she had muscular cramps. After some thoughts, I decided that its best the 2 of us start our descend first so that they could catch up eventually and hence we would not slow down our descend.
As we descend, it was getting dark real fast as the evening sun was blocked by the tropical forest. Taking into account the possibilities of not making it out in time or worse still, lost in the jungle, I decided to inform some outsiders on the current situation.
Upon descending to 700metres, where cellphone reception was available, I informed my aunt on our situation and about the rest of my friends who may not leave the jungle in time shall it rain, and worse still they were possibly without any water and food supply to last the night, and without any tents.
With the grace of God, we managed to reach the first camping site by 7pm and eventually reached my car at 8.30pm. But we were worried about the other group because they didn't contact us till much later. Eventually they reached approximately 10pm where it was totally dark in the forest.
Lesson learned was to bring along a compass because despite having a GPS unit with me which showed me which way to take, it didn't tell us which direction we were facing. Apart from that, it has been a great day. Till today, my muscles are still recovering. Could barely walk up and down the stairs.
Once I reached home, I exported the data from the GPS unit and plotted some interesting diagrams.
Our GPS trail, exported to Google Earth
As you can see from the graph above, it becomes steeper as we ascend.
Check out all the Photos here
|
Non-IT contents only 