Gunung Datuk (2-8-08)

Yeah, finally we have had our very first trek on last Saturday to Gunung Datuk located at Rembau, Negeri Sembilan. I woke up around 6 am in Saturday morning, get myself ready and walked to school with my friend. We had our light breakfast on the restaurant beside our school, and registered ourselves at the foyer meanwhile. There were not only CIMP students, but few students who're from SIS. We registered ourselves with Mr. Plouffe, and received our safety kit with a whistle from Ms. Colins. Right on the proposed time, 8am, we walked out from the school to catch our bus.

After 45 minutes on the highway, we stopped at Seremban's R&R to take a break, and breakfast for some of them. I bought a pack of Oreo’s at Shell petrol station, in case I have insufficient of food. We continued our journey after 15 minutes and headed towards Rembau. The whole journey took us around 1 hour and 30 minutes. We reached the foot of the mountain around 10 am and started our trek.
We had our warm up done in a very interesting way, which was a very simple exercise, but it actually works out every part of our body. We stepped into the mountain on 10.15am by crossing a river, continued by climbing up the mountain. Gunung Datuk is 870m high, and took around two and a half hours to get to the peak with moderate speed. After 15 minutes of trek, I found my stamina is getting weaker due to the almost 60 degree inclined path on the first part of trek. I had been taking rests for few times within an hour. The 2nd part of the trek is basically pretty smooth, we just need to walk on the slope, and sometimes climb up some rocks and jump over some trunks. Well, I was in the second last team of the trek, due to our weak stamina and lack of experiences on trekking. During our journey to the peak, we were caught in some rain, but luckily it was not heavy, and it actually fresh us up, not bad though. The last part of the trek was towards the peak, lecturer kept on convincing us by telling how close we are to the top, and giving us something to chew with, it was really encouraging.

At around 1.30pm, we reached the top, where there was a flat area for us to have our lunch and rest. Right behind the area, there were some HUGE rocks, stacked up together naturally and formed the peak. We needed to get to the peak by climbing up the ladder, which was actually betting our life to get the breathtaking scenery; one slip may cause unwanted fatality. I took care of every of my steps and made sure that I was brave enough to get to the peak, which was really dangerous I would say. However, I managed to climb up to the peak finally, and I was really excited at that moment. We took quite a lot of photos on the peak and stayed up there for around 30 mins long. After we had our group photos up there, everyone came down one by one carefully and take our very last rest before we go down the mountain.
At 2.30pm sharp, we started to go down the mountain team by team. Due to the drizzle, the path was somehow slippery, we needed to have a very nice grip on the surface, and we held on branches and root all the way down the mountain to prevent ourselves from falling down. Some SIS 'child' who were still pretty naive, were RUNNING down the mountain, but in the end they made it successfully without any unwanted injuries. We arrived at the bottom after one and a half hour, which was a pretty satisfying duration for me. Going down is so much easier, but it kills our leg strength very much.

Some of them took of their shoes and rinsed their leg into the mini-waterfall to refresh them, while I just washed my hand and necks to fresh up myself. While waiting for the rest of the guys to come down, we had a chat with lecturers, and finally we went into the changing room to get our cloths changed. After 1 hour, everyone get back to the bus, and we headed back to Sunway. During our journey back, we shared our food together by passing around in the bus, it was pretty fun and enjoyable. I slept in the bus after 30 minutes, until we reached the toll plaza of LDP. We arrived at Sunway around 6.30pm. I had my dinner with my buddy at restaurant nearby and walked back to our house respectively.

Overall, personally I would say this is a very nice and enjoyable experience for every one of us. I believe that every trekker was really enjoying the trek, although it was somehow tough for beginners. I've got to know with a lot of friends, and got myself close to the nature. In another sense, I had also strengthened up my stamina, and I’m really looking forward to the coming trek.