Tour de Ophir (part tiga)

Ophir's summit at 1276m

Sorry about writing such a looong story.. I hope you're still with me. All good stories tend to get a little long-winded, just like 真情, non?

Anyways, we had a good sleep for like two plus hours, before we got awakened by other groups trotting by and strong winds blowing. The weather was threatening to turn bad any moment, but fortunately it didn't. Else we would have been caught in a big bad fix. We were up before 4am and debating whether to go ahead with the plan to climb to the summit for sunrise. I could have told you that we used common sense and logic to reason that it's too dangerous in the dark, and we wouldn't be able to make it in time in any case. But actually we were just plain lazy, and decided to sleep until 6.

After breakfast of cup noodles, instant cereal and the remaining walnut cake, we proceeded in clean fatigue (empty-handed) up to the summit. We left our stuff at the campsite and took turns to carry just one bag containing bottles of water, a pack of kitkats, and the camera.

CP4 to CP5 was the easiest of the whole journey, basically just a jungle trail. This was quickly followed by CP5 to CP6 - the obstacle course with ladders and ropes! There was one part where we had to scale a 2-storey high boulder by pulling ourselves up with ropes. If you look over your shoulders halfway up, you could see really, really far. Definitely not recommended for those with acrophobia!

Somewhere along the way there's a KFC (I kid you not!), and it's finger-licking terok. CP6 is Botak Hill, so called because it's pretty barren. The Marathoner said he camped here on his first time, where there were nobody but the stars above (reminds me of a joke, haha). Now it's forbidden to do so. CP5's the highest you can camp.

This is getting boring, so I'll cut this long story short. Eventually we reached the summit at 9 plus, if I remember correctly. The summit was quite cool, literally, as it was already amongst the clouds. I thought it'll be lonely at the top, but a big group of Malays were already resting there!

The climb down was harder than I expected. While you basically need just strength and stamina to go up, coming down is technically more difficult. And very bad for your kneecaps. After that 3 hours or so, mine were very much hurting. At the end of the day, we were all wasted and wounded. I passed out at 9.30pm that night. I can't remember the last time I slept so early!

It's weird, you know, in that when you're doing such things or have just completed it, you get so exhausted that you tell yourself you'll never do it again. Why suffer, after all. But the next day at work, I was already checking out which other peaks to explore. Well, I guess that's human nature...

And if you're still with me on this looong story, you must be pretty good too. Maybe you can join me next time for Mount Tahan? Heheheh.

(大结局.. finally!）