Hiking to Wangsa Hill / Pak San / Bukit Putih

Runners are asking, so how have you been since the great marathon attempt? The truth is, I've been over-resting! And also, a new challenge came up, and I've decided to do some cross-training over the last few weeks.

This was from a hiking trip last weekend to Pak San @ Wangsa Hill @ Bukit Putih, a surprise little hideout near Taman Cuepacs, somewhere I could not describe how I got myself to. As it is, Cheras itself is unknown territory to me...

The trip is a preparation for our July 20-24 trip to Mount Kinabalu. This will be my second climb of the tallest mountain in Southeast Asia, and not looking down upon this attempt, some last minute training is needed. Actually, this was a last minute suggestion hatched up over an abalone meal, where one of my colleagues decided that eating abalones was too rich despite it being a milestone dinner occasion for that project, and he felt he had to work himself harder for his next target. Me, I'm just in for the ride...

Anyway, back to this Pak San. It was no simple feat. The mountain has levels, we were probably up to Level 6 and then came down. Apparently there is Level 7 and the summit, but my team did not know how to get there. This thing about Levels is almost like those computer games, you battle battle and then you reach the next level... or rather like learning kung-fu...

In any case, we did spend about 3.5 hours there, went up the 6 levels and at level 5, detoured off to a waterfall off the path, which turned out to be a tiny regretful moment, as the detour descended sharply, and that meant, we had to climb back up from the waterfall before proceeding to descend fully.

My calves never recovered from this hiking activity. Furthermore, I sustained an injury to the ball of my feet, as the shoe just cut into my skin, causing a deep bleeding blister which hurt all the way down, as it scraped against the same edge of the shoe. When I got back to the car, I had a 50c coin equivalent blot of blood on the sock, and the whole week it took a long time to heal as it was a common area where any shoe will rub against.

Surprisingly, I loaded my backpack with my DSLR, whom I've ignored for almost many months... so there you go, a few pictures to share here.

Pic 1 - Level 3 - there, you know when you reach each level
Pic 2 - Selamat sampai ke atas Bukit Putih Stesen 3
Pic 3 - A bit of fresh green vegetation
Pic 4 - I almost grabbed this thorny tree crossing one of those fallen trunks. Teaches one to check what you are reaching out for... yes those are thorns...
Pic 5 - Tiny waterfall and some bit of wading and cooling for the sore feet, which was put to a more severe test climbing back up. Not worth it!!