Contents:
Intro
Over the Chinese New Year holidays, my friends and I did something crazy. We had an impromptu trip to Gunung Yong Belar, G3. In Peninsular Malaysia, the 7 highest are known as the G7 Mountains, they are the toughest to climb due to the length of the trek and the difficult terrain of the hike. Yong Belar is the 3rd highest, at 2181M high, just 6m shy of the highest, Gunung Tahan. It's usually done as a 2D1N hike, but to reduce the carrying weight, I decided to do it in 1 day so that we can eliminate the tents and food.
How to get to Gunung Yong Belar
Yong Belar is located between the borders of Perak and Kelantan near the Cameron highlands region. We took a bus from Johor Bahru to Ipoh (Terminal Amanjaya) on the day before our hike and we stayed at a lovely Airbnb nearby to rest for the night. On the day of the hike, we woke up at about 4 am and our guide picked us up from the apartment. We first drove to an eatery nearby for some breakfast and also to take out food for lunch on the mountain. We had roti canai for lunch that day. After breakfast, we drove for another 2 hours or so to the starting point, which was at a mosque. From there, we took a 4WD for about 30min to the actual starting point of the hike which was at a farmhouse in the Cameron highlands region, which made it really cold (about 15°C) even at the starting point.
The Hike
We started the hike at around 8am. The starting part of the hike was relatively easy. Given the chilly weather here, the hike was quite enjoyable. It took about 2hrs to reach camp Tudung Periuk which is about the expected pace. There is one water point at this campsite where we refilled our bottles to prepare for the long journey that still awaited us.
After this point, one of our member's knee injury started to act up and our pace slowed down considerably. The expected time from camp Tudung Periuk to the next camp Kasut was 3 hours, but we took around 4+ hours to reach. There, we had our lunch to energize ourselves in this cold weather. The lunch was roti prata, chips, chocolate bars and biscuits. the warmth and energy that it gave us was much needed as our morale was quite low after learning that we were slower than expected. It gave us a slight boost of energy which enabled us to reach the summit quickly, about 1.5hr from camp Kasut.
One thing that stood out to me during this hike was the vegetation here are all incredibly beautiful! Usually hiking in Malaysia, you would need to hike for many hours to reach an elevation of >1000m to be able to reach a part of the forest which they call the bonsai forest/mossy forest. But in this hike, it starts already with a mossy forest-like terrain which is very enjoyable as it is very cooling and calm in this kind of forest. But although it was cooling, the trail was SUPER muddy. A good 40% of the trail is muddy and if you want to keep your feet dry, you would have to find ways to go around it which made the whole trail much more difficult than it needed to be. The mud was at least ankle deep, at some points knee deep and at the worst sections, it was waist deep! because of this, it slowed our ascent and descent significantly.
We took about 7.5 hours to reach the summit, it was about 330pm when we reached it. We were all elated to reach the summit. Our spirits were momentarily lifted as we celebrated our accomplishment of reaching the summit of G3, the third-highest mountain in peninsula Malaysia. But deep inside, we all knew that the worst had yet to pass as we still had a long long way back.
Indeed, none of us ever anticipated the long 12 hour hike that we were going to take back. One of our group members had been suffering from a knee injury before this trip and the long hike we just took aggravated it even more. Going downhill is very bad on the knees, and because of this, we had to go at a really slow pace back down the mountain.
We took 3hrs just to get from the summit back to camp Kasut, going up took us only 1.5 hours, which gave us a grave indication of how slow our pace had slowed. The journey to camp Tudung Periuk was the worst, full of both uphills and downhills, we hiked for a full 6 hours just to achieve an elevation descent of about 300m. At about the halfway point, it started to drizzle densely in the forest. Luckily, it wasn't a huge downpour, but given that chilly temperature, even a small drizzle was enough to get us shivering. Our guide, seeing that our morale was incredibly low at the time, offered to cook us some hot coffee. In that cold, wet and damp condition, the coffee was SO SO GOOD! It's hard to believe, but it actually gave us a little speed boost just like how drinking a potion in video games would! LOL. It didn't last long, about 30 min or so. But still, it got us moving again and that kept our bodies warm.
With the bulk of the way back out of the way, the end was finally within sight. At camp Tudung Periuk, we stopped and rested for a good 20 mins, both to steel our minds for the last stretch of the way back and to contemplate our poor life decisions. Once we set off, we kept going all the way, no more stops. It started to rain even more heavily in the last 2 hours. Having painstakingly been keeping my feet dry through all the mud and gunk until this point, I finally gave up and trudged through it mindlessly. Finally, after 4 more hours, we reached the end of our journey.
We came back down to the mosque looking and feeling like we've just been through a natural disaster. 20 hours of hiking from 8 am the previous day till 4 am, but we finally made it!
Final thoughts
This trip really taught me that being prepared and in good condition for a tough hike is extremely important. What should have been an enjoyable 12-15h hike turned into something of a nightmare that lasted us a whole 20 hours! But it was a great adventure nonetheless! It broke my previous record of longest hike I've ever done. (previous being Korga 19hrs and Tahan 17hrs) Truly an unforgettable memory!
To me, the injured buddy shouldn't continue the summit attack
Sorry, i can't figure out how u hike Tahan in 17 hours ???
Anyway congratulation for conquering YB(G3)