So near yet so far....I was at 3,668m against the peak of 4,052m but by distance, it is probably about 1.5km away. It was raining and coupled with strong winds at 4.30 a.m, it is unbearable to move up. My whole suits (from head to toe) was wet (it is freezing but thanks to my extra fats...I can still hold on to climb down) and by the time I reached the last wall (with rope), I practically stop myself from ascending further as I was never prepared to climb the rope (although I had climbed two other wall rope minutes earlier but it was not only about 40 degrees steepness, and this one is probably about 60-70 degrees).Where to start, there are so many good memories along the way from Day 1. The first day, it took me 9 hours and 18 minutes to reach Pendant Hut (about 80m above Laban Rata) from Mesilau Point. The length of the journey is about 8.3km. Frankly the first 4 km was peanut but as it comes to KM5, I started to feel the tiredness and coldness without my jacket, little drinks and foods. The wind was very strong and we (both Heroes and myself) had to chase our porter for the jackets and extra supplies. We managed to call Ah Too to look for our porter who was about 500 metres ahead of us (500 metres...means we are about 45 minutes in part based on our phase of walking...haiz). Though we have our jacket but we did not take out our head light and extra supplies from the bag as we never thought that we will need to walk for another 4 more hours as we are expecting ourself to reach Laban Rata latest 7pm (so we happily walked ourself up and still got the time to take photos on the scenery...and letting the porter up on his way).
We reached the junction between Timpohon route and Mesilau route at about 5.30 plus pm. I have asked the guide (do not know many times), how near are we to Laban Rata ? He said, it is quite near...another 2.3km (my heart is very sour and tired) and urge us to move quickly to beat the darkness ahead, so we obediently follow through. Along the route, we also met many couples and they were interwined in our journey. Thanks to them, we also use their muscle pain lotion as if not, we could not ever reach to Pendant Hut. They are loving couples helping each other up the Mountain. At 6pm, we overheard one of the couple calling their friends to pack dinner for them as the restaurant closed at 7pm. Thus, I have asked heroes to call Chuan yew to pack for us (this proof to be vital as none of our members did that as I discovered from Paul yesterday...what a relief...). At 5km using Timpohon scale@7.28pm (if Mesilau, we have reached 7km), our supplies had run dry and the darkness had enclosed us. I sms to Ah Too/Paul/Chuan Yew to ask for the head lights/food/medicine (as Heroes complained that he has fever).
At 7.45pm, we received head light from the guide but no food or medicine. Again, I sms to Paul sending stronger message to him telling him that Heroes is very sick. We were at 7.5km, the last pondok before Laban Rata. We waited for about 15 minutes and we decided to move a bit as to shorten the time whilst waiting for help (It is very cold with strong wind blowing...I think the temperature has dropped to below 14 degress Celcius).
Chuan Yew met us at about 7.8km with foods and medicine. What a great relief...(time is 8.00pm) (I must mention here that this Chuan Yew is super fit for this adventure....he had actually reached Pendant Hut at 4 something pm, having rest, trying to get shower and had dinner. he had volunteered to come down to bring supplies to us the moment Paul told him about our needs at around 7.45pm)
It is only about 600m to the Pendant Hut but it took us more than an hour to reach the destination. It is really a painful effort and I could not have completed this journey without the constant motivation from Chuan Yew along the way as he guided me.
At 9.18pm, I reached Pendant Hut ! (I am totally flat !) after 9hours and 18 minutes journey from Mesilau Gate.
To be continued......
