A reccee trip in Lata Damak, 21 May 2000
You know what? Before I started writing this one, I had a bad feeling that it was going to be short because the recee today turned out to be very short. Just how short? Just to give you an idea, Fatt and I covered 4km during the 45 minutes ride in Lata Damak! Yeah, 4 frigging kilometers after we drove 2 frigging hours all the way from Prai to Selama! If not because of Fatt's rushing back home to catch the final match of Thomas Cup(who played again?), I think I am going to do the logging track, which was reputable to be a killer ride even for dirtbikers!
I came out an idea of doing reccee in Kulim during our last ride in Sungai Sedim. After hearing nagging like we are going to the same old trails over and over again. I realized that it was time for us to find new trails. Recent trip to Ulu Paip was a successful trip except I did not spend much time to mark it. Otherwise, Ulu Paip would be another sweet XC trail. If you were familiar with Kulim, you will agree that Kulim is haven for mountainbikers. Rubber estates, oil palm plantations, forest reserves, state parks, which are all covered with godzillion single tracks that eventually lead to somewhere on planet Earth. Only effort one will have to do is to mark the trail. That's it. You only need markers to mark the trail for future rides!
I did not expect to have a big turnout for this trip. In fact, I prayed hard that no one will contact me to get more info about this ride since it was a reccee trip. Less riders less head ache lah. It turned out that only me and Fatt would go to this adventure. ST and folks decided to "chiat kar kee". Dr. Francis was planning to take newbies for a ride in Serdang(God bless their souls!). I don't know about Viper Ong though. Probably he's joining Dr. Francis having fun with newbies(Hey, no pain no gain right?). So, it was only me and my high school buddy. I talked Fatt into driving since I was still bothered with the flu I just caught during my business trip on Friday. I informed him that he would fetch me up at 8.30am - 9.00am. By the way, it was the most relax MTB trip I had since I joined this crazy bunch of over grown kids. I did not have to struggle to get up early in morning and sped to the meeting point!
The initial plan was to reccee in Kulim. We chatted the possibility of doing ride in Gunung Bintang, and I had been trying to find out more about this mountain from my source. We both decided to find out where would be the trail head since we did not have mood to ride anyway. We passed thru the destined trailhead in Kulim and sped towards Sungai Bayur, which was about 20km from Mahang. It was a smooth drive thru Malay kampungs. We saw a lot of goats lying on road, which told me that not many people visited this place. The trail head was next to the Sungai Damak primary school. It could be easily spotted by a signboard said Lata Damak. The first portion of the road was a tarmac laid pavement. After crossing the bridge, the trail will be 100% dirt track. We decided to drive in to see where would the trail end. Wee finally stopped the car, when the trail ahead was not accessible by four wheel vehicle anymore.
We were greeted by a junction that led to three different trails. One of them looked very much promising with a steep uphill climb at the very beginning. After consulted with the locals, we decided to check out the other two and left the steep uphill trail to another time! The first was supposed to be ended at waterfall. The trail started with a uphill climb. Fatt and I had no problem to tackle the climb at all. Our journey to waterfall ended when the trail was fenced off on the way. Apparently, someone has claimed the land for agriculture purpose. Seeing that we couldn't go any further, we decided to check out the second trail, which was a logging trail according to local that would lead to the peak of a hill! It turned out this was another dead end. It was very apparent that the trail was not in use for some time, judging from the overgrown grasses and leeches! Yes, lots of leeches. We just stopped for a moment and we saw in horror that there were army of inch long leeches racing towards us! Time was already approaching 11.30am. Since we decided to finish the ride before noon, we turned back to the trail head and headed home.
Was it a successful ride? I don't know. I think the ride was quite relaxing. At least we were not rushing for time to meet others. Fatt and I agreed that this was supposed to be the ride we should have over weekends(hint! hint!). No rushing to the meeting point, no ball bursting race to the top, no numb hands after a high speed chase downhill on technical offroad single track and no hangover effect after a 2 hour rest! I am planning to come back to Lata Damak again to tackle the third logging track. I hope it will not be another empty promise again. The plan is to have another reccee next week. Watch out for updates!
Stay Tuned!
An afterthought:
Sometimes I wonder what it's worth after tackle very difficult ride at the Tiger Hill or any killer climbs. Are we doing this trying to prove that we are still man enough? This feeling is very strong when I am not in the mood to do the ride. It is so strong that I throw my bike away and curse anyone in front of me who tries to comfort me. Who knows, maybe this is a symptom of approaching mid life crisis? I think I need a break from mountainbiking!