After another hike at up to the canopy walkway at F.R.I.M. on Saturday morning, we started to get a bit more adventurous on Sunday. We headed out of KL early on Sunday morning and took an hour’s drive north to hike up to the beautiful Chiling Falls. We parked up on the road from Kuala Kuba Baharu to Frasers Hill where there is a well marked trail head that leads through the thick jungle along the river. After a 3km uphill hike and climb which includes no less than seven river crossings we arrived at the roaring plunge pool with the Sungai Chiling River cascading down the hundreds of feet from the upper falls above.

This is a fabulous hike it feels like you are in one of those nature shows on national Geographic Channel with the Jungle so loud and vibrant all around then you realize, this is it, you are actually in a tropical jungle and the only thing that is stopping an Elephant or a Tiger walking past is timing. It almost goes without saying that the jungle is absolutely teaming with life, everything is alive, giant iridescent butterflies waft around their smaller fluttering multicolor cousins, millions of ants are busy moving bits of the forest around, and as we waded across the river we could see it too was alive with fish.

Early morning is ideal for this hike, as it’s still quite cool due to the higher altitude and the canopy cover. After a nice cool swim we met lots of day trippers heading up through the Jungle to the falls as we headed back downstream to the car.

 

Sunday morning training continued today with a visit to the hills on the East side of KL. We got off to a decaffeinated start when we met at our rendezvous point outside Starbucks at The Great Eastern Mall at 8am to find out it does not open until 9am on a Sunday. So we headed on to our assembly point on the forest fringe on Taman Tun Abdul Razak which is the point at which KL meets the Jungle, literally, one second you are standing in suburbia one minute later you seem to be transported through some sort of stargate portal to the depths of the Jungle.

The track incline kicked off almost straight away at 45 degrees into the jungle canopy. Most of us got pretty tired pretty fast, one noticeable exception was our guide today, local resident Datuk Lee and his three dogs, he started off last and arrived up at our first resting point first. It was a bit of a case of the old man teaching the young ones how to do it, despite being our senior, his spritely goat like hiking skills were much more preferable than my elephantine strides as my feet got heavier with every stride.

The path leveled off and followed the edge of a reservoir, which thankfully for me was horizontal hiking for a while, Datuk Lee then transmogrified from goat to Botanist and started showing us some of the hidden flora and fauna that was right in front of our eyes.  He showed us jungle mushrooms and “Monkey Cups” or Pitcher Plants. Pitcher Plants are a carnivorous plant with a sock shaped leaf filled liquid that attracts its prey of insects into the open top of the sock, down into the liquid then drowns them and digests them. One would nearly feel bad for the insects until you noticed whet this particular plant was growing, right beside the still mosquito filled waters of reservoir. I don’t like mosquitoes so I guess I have a new favorite plant!!

We strolled on by the reservoir and quicker than a character in Harry Potter, our botanist guide had turned back into a goat and gone vertical! So lots of puffing and panting later we caught up on Datuk Lee for some more botany class to the amazing soundtrack of the monkeys which we could hear all around us but were never revealed. So after about an hour of chasing the goat we reached the top of the trail took a break and then began our decent from the thick jungle through the stargate and back to suburbia, where we dried off and headed to Starbucks for a much needed elephant sized venti latte and a St. Patricks Shambo from O’Briens  sandwich Bar next door. FMK. 

 

OmniBus-Climb4Charity dates are now booked out, with the addition of one more to our group bringing the total to 19 climbers, another separate group has booked the remaining places for the weekend, so we are full!
 
Now all we have to do is get Mountain fit.
 
Last weekend a small group of us hit FRIM in KL again for a 6KM hike with a mid section steep incline and decline, which was pretty challenging.
 
The cool part was how we knew it was 6KM.  This was achieved using a pretty cool appliance of science where Amy had a transponder slipped into her shoe which sends signals to her iPod  which gives her stats on the hike! Wow cool stuff, there is even more that can be done by synching it to iTunes or iFit or something, I was lost at that point, but it was pretty fascinating technology.  All the same though I’d prefer the helium weather balloons tied to my shorts as a better solution on how to get up the mountain.