Mist, Moss, and Mud

Due to the responsibilities of school we decided that a trip that consumed the entire weekend would not be wise, and opted to just go adventuring Friday and Saturday. We rented a car (an ancient, disintegrating Proton Saga) and set off for the Cameron Highlands. Landon was driving and Berthold seemed to have the navigation under control, so I merrily studied and listened to music.

I've crawled through many a culvert in my time,
 but never one with a waterfall at one end.

About half an hour into the steep, winding drive up into the highlands, I noted a peculiar smell of burning. We stopped in a pull-off and found that there was, in fact, suspicious vapors rising from under the hood. It turned out that the radiator had just run out of coolant and was boiling over, so we snagged some water from a nearby waterfall and refilled it.

That (and turning off the AC) seemed to mostly solve the problem, but we had to stop a couple more times when it began to overheat again.

As our altitude increased the lack of AC ceased to be a problem as the temperature and humidity dropped. I had forgotten how lovely weather could be. The jungle covered hills were shrouded in clouds, constantly shifting under the influence of prevailing winds and illuminated by the setting sun. We stopped at a tea plantation and wandered in the tea fields a bit.

I think that I shall never see a field as green as one growing tea.

Much to my excitement, the shop sold tea at reasonable prices, and I bought enough (I hope) to last the rest of the semester. I have been missing tea.

We couldn’t seem to find our hotel so we called them and were told ‘I can see you, stay there.’ Someone came and led us down an alley, through the back of a restaurant, past cages of chickens and to the hotel reception.

Relieved of our belongings we went to find the night market which, according to the internet, was one of the best. We found a few stalls but no real market. After asking around we discovered that the night market had been forbidden from happening this particular day because of a bicycle race whose terminus was in this town the following day. Disappointed, we found a nasi goreng stall and took the edge off our hunger.

One of the nearby mountains (Gunung Brinchang, 6,666 feet) had a trail which began nearby, and I convinced the others that it would be best to get up early and hike before the heat. I was awakened much earlier than I would have liked by the call to prayer from a nearby mosque. After the obligatory cups of tea, we set off up the mountain. Some helpful locals redirected us after a wrong turn or two, and suddenly we found ourselves in the jungle.

The trail was relatively steep, but the tangled roots of trees which laced the pathway provided reasonable steps. One tree (potentially an Ent), growing in the middle of the path appeared to be mid-stride.

As we ascended, the wind strengthened and the fog and moss grew thicker. We found a break in the trees which coincided with a break in the clouds to provide a reasonable view of the mountains. The wind brought dense chunks of fog rolling over the ridge behind to dissipate. 

The clouds beat us to the peak and when arrived visibility was not more than 25 meters. Berthold and Landon opted to find their way down the mountain and seek other activities that the Cameron Highlands had to offer, but Kevin and I decided that four kilometers and 250 vertical meters wasn’t enough of a trek.

There was supposed to be a trail from the top of Brinchang to Irau, the highest point in the Cameron Highlands. The maps weren’t very clear, and neither were the directions we received from a taxi driver, so we decided to just try to find it ourselves.

There were numerous trails leading into the jungle from the main road and since we didn’t know which was the trail we were looking for, we took most of them. Most just vanished into dense mossy undergrowth.

One simply went to a rock face.

We scrambled up it and found a wall of vegetation with one small opening in it.

We forced our way through and it opened into a whole new world.

After a number of enjoyable side excursions, we found a legitimate-looking trail and followed it. We soon discovered that the first hike was just pregaming. This trail was far steeper, more slippery and treacherous and interspersed with mud pits. For a while I made a game of never stepping directly on the ground and traversing via roots and rocks alone. It was quite an enjoyable challenge and had a bonus of keeping my feet clean. Of course all it took was one misstep on a slippery log and Squelch! I lost the game.

The trail undulated like a serpent, taking us up one steep, slippery, root entangled stretch and then back down just as steeply, and once we reached the bottom, back up again.

 It was more like climbing most of the time than hiking. I found that Gollum style was very effective, and decreased the feeling that I was always about to go bouncing down to the nearest bottom.  The risk of turning an ankle was constant, and the necessity of being prepared to slip at every step was even more exhausting. About a kilometer in we came upon a sign that indicated that it was the trail that we had been looking for, and we had another two kilometers to go.

I didn’t really care where the trail was taking us; just traveling it was rewarding enough in itself. We were surrounded by so much beauty that we had to stop from time to time simply to try to absorb it. As usual, my photographic urges to capture it were completely foiled.

The vegetation changed dramatically between the ridges and valleys, but for most of the trek we were surrounded by moss. Mist saturated the forest of massive, twisted trees, so covered in moss that they formed an almost solid roof at times. Moss cloaked trees, moss draped bushes, moss covered rocks, and moss carpeted depressions where every sound from the outside world was muted.

Can you spot the leprechaun?

The moss and bushes made it impossible to see very far in any direction, and at one point Kevin lost me completely when I took a side route. In some places the tangled undergrowth arching over the trail was so thickly blanketed with moss that it created a tunnel. The seclusion from the outside world, eerie stillness, and drifting bits of cloud made the whole scene seem mythological. I would not have been surprised to see out of the corner of my eye a dryad slip silently in into the woods.

The air got wetter and wetter as we hiked, and when we reached the peak it finally decided to rain. The cloud we were in blocked all visibility on the top, but we had made it. While our displacement may have been three kilometers, the actual distance traveled was significantly greater. I was planning to do a backflip to celebrate, but then a group of hikers we had passed showed up, and I didn’t want an audience. Maybe it’s for the best; I didn’t exactly have ‘energy legs’ at that point. I found some socks hanging in a tree, and they looked pretty nice so I decided to keep them as adventure socks. (Ha. As if I wear socks on any real adventure.)

I almost had service on the top, so I texted Landon that we would be later returning than we expected. He responded that they were stuck in the next town, five kilometers away, because of the bike race. Since we had almost fifteen kilometers to get back instead of six we decided that we should bid the peak farewell and mosey back.

The trek back was even more difficult than the way up, since the rain had deepened the mud and made everything more slippery. It was still beautiful though, and coming from the opposite direction was enough of a perspective change that it was almost like a new trail. We slipped, scrambled, scaled, and squelched the ‘three’ kilometers back to the trail-head. From there we began walking the 12 kilometers back to town.

It seemed that a cloud had eaten the entire mountain and for several kilometers we walked down a misty road through the jungle. Walking down a steep road in sodden, muddy shoes, after seven hours of intense jungle trekking, having eaten only a few slices of bread and some chips that day, is not something I would recommend. A small creek provided an opportunity to rinse off some mud, and the water also cooled our strain-swollen ankles and burning muscles.

Then the jungle abruptly changed to mist-shrouded tea plantations. The chartreuse tea fields, bordered by mist-shrouded evergreens, vanished into the sea of cloud. It was exquisite.

 We just stood for a while, trying to commit all the sensations to memory.

Eventually we remembered that we still had around ten kilometers to walk (ideally before dark) and continued our exhausted amble down the mountain.

Apparently the roads opened and Landon was able to come and meet us, so we only walked ten of the thirteen kilometers on the road. Our total trek was approximately 20 kilometers, but half of that was on one of the roughest trails I have ever hiked.

We stopped at a Buddhist temple and bought some petrol (apparently it is the only source in the area) and then coasted down out of the clouds back to the heat and humidity of the lowlands.