Penang Hills and Trails - Challenging Times, Part 2b
Above Titi Kerawang

This is one of a series of pages on walking the hills of Penang, click here for the index. This is a Grade 2 walk although this came as a complete surprise to both of us.

Please visit my Penang buses page for information on accessing the starting point.

Back in December 2012, on our first ever walk from the Air Itam Dam to Titi Kerawang, we bumped into two groups of people who were 'sweeping', at the back of the 28 km 3rd Rainforest Hash Challenge, a distance which would amount to three or four of our hikes these days. A few days later, out of curiosity, we followed the start of their route out of Balik Pulau which at the time proved enough to dissuade us from attempting to complete it... 

In the intervening years, without really trying we have filled in much of the rest. However, what we have noticed was that their 'hares' had used non-biodegradable markers (paint and plastic) which were still visible in the jungle 4 or more years later as a result of which I sent the organisers an email (reproduced below) and I was given a welcome assurance that this time there would be a 'clean up'.

Other reports on sections of the Penang Rainforest Hash Challenge 2018 are available:

• Below Bukit Elvira (West)
• Sungai Air Puteh  
• Beyond Titi Kerawang to Rain Gauge 22

Now Yuehong is probably fitter than I am, we can go more or less anywhere as long as we limit the distance covered and on Saturday we had checked out the next section as far as the Air Puteh valley. We had left it there, we were familiar with the next section which would climb to the gated road which runs up from just below the Titi Kerawang Falls, that could wait till later. Today, we would take that road up to rejoin the trail and follow it over the hill and down to the path that runs from the Da Ba Gong temple where we have enjoyed numerous feasts.  

It was always going to be a walk for 'enthusiasts' so we didn't bother to take many pictures on the climb, it's well recorded elsewhere on this site. Expecting a route that was 'challenging' and the likelihood of rain later in the day, we started earlier than normal, leaving Mavis around 09.30. After half an hour, we reached the first significant junction and continued straight up. With the overcast conditions it was quite cool but it was necessarily rather humid.

There is just one further junction, had we known it, we could have avoided the only scramble of the day by going left which is why this is down as a grade 2 route. I had advised Yuehong that previous challenges had used a pathless route over the hill ahead and she decided it was time for both the insect repellant and some spiritual guidance.

Just up the road was the paint mark we had seen on an earlier (unreported) hike here a month ago. The initials 'THK' probably indicate 'The Hash Kakis', the Tuesday hash which claims to be the easiest in Penang, but hashmen are like politicians, they tell 'porky pies' every time they open their mouths. I had expected to climb behind the abandoned Buddhist hermitage a bit further up, but Yuehong spotted markings to the left and, yes, the herd of elephants had been this way.

A slippery climb came as absolutely no surprise.

However, it quickly led to a vegetable garden which was not quite what we would have expected.

There was no paper to speak of, just a bit of paint here and there, but more than enough to follow where everyone had gone. We turned left on a good path and, heavens, what was this? There was a stunning but gloomy view all the way to Bukit Pulau Betong, that was definitely not in the PRH challenge specification. 

Ahead was the concrete road we could have taken earlier as a simple short cut. I had been here once nearly 4 years ago, but had had no time to explore further. That was something I should have put right by now but had never got round to doing it because I knew of nowhere it might lead to which might have been accessible from the Titi Kerawang valley. 

Game on, this was going to be very interesting. These hares were inspired, in a rare display of hash intelligence they had daubed paint on short lived banana leaves. The concrete finished but for a while the trail was still good for 4 wheel vehicles and that was an old rubber estate.

We met an old Indonesian man gathering stakes and he said, yes, lots of people had come through here on Saturday and we could easily carry on down to the valley beyond. First though we had a final short climb.

We came to a newly cleared area with more concrete and a view down to the fish farms at Kuala Sungai Pinang. We could see that the cutting was spreading downwards, this had not been virgin forest but a cultivated area which had subsequently been abandoned.

There was absolutely no doubt where we had to go although guidance was minimal. The fence is there to keep the wild boar out. We went through a gap in it which would presumably be closed during the hours of darkness and found ourselves at a turning circle at the top of another concrete path. Yuehong as usual popped the question and again, the answer was 'Yes' as we had been here when we did some exploring before attending a feast at the Da Ba Gong temple up the valley two years earlier. 

Since then the view looking back has changed, today's (left) and January 2017's (right). You can see why we went no further on that occasion!

If that's not enough to convince you then, here's another 'Then (left) and Now (right)' pair of pictures.

The rubber trees were marked, not that most of the participants will have noticed, it was very clear that they had simply hurtled straight down the slope. That was not an option for us with our 'sensitive' knees, we had to very wary of the slime covering the path as we came down to the main path up from Titi Kerawang.  

Sadly, the next owner up seems to be unsympathetic to such as us, the sign on the left advertises a 'bad dog' although when we went up here recently they seemed no worse than any of the others in the estates. More worryingly, a proper gate has been installed further up just below the temple although it was easily skirted or even squeezed under. Certainly, it probably meant that what we call Rexy's Crossing was off limits for this event. In which case the chosen route would have had to go down a long way to find a point to cross the Titi Kerawang stream it's not a path we enjoy coming up at this time of year and normally we wouldn't consider going down it.

Not that it was an issue on Saturday, where the Gadarene Swine had continued straight down the rubber terraces. I can only assume that hares had been stationed here to halt the rush because ahead would have lain disaster in the form of the Titi Kerawang Upper Falls. We took the zig zags taking care to walk at the edge of the concrete where there was some sand for adhesion.

The rubber finished and we were into fruit, helpfully there were several gingers which could carry the paint marks. Not only could we hear the falls, we could see the tank part way up.

This was as close as we and, I hope the runners, got to the water. A while back, we looked at this area and concluded that it would have been complete madness to approach the falls from this side and eventually we went there up the valley as indicated below. For now we continued downwards but then had a short sharp climb up to where the owner is building a new house.

I have to say that I would award the hares for this section an A* for environmental awareness, we had seen a few pieces of naked paper which had almost completely disintegrated in the subsequent rain and almost none of the dreaded red and white plastic. This one example of sleeved paper was all we saw, if more had been used two days earlier then it had all been clinically removed. There was also not a single recent plastic bottle to be seen.

The path by Yuehong leads down to the stream, we had 'been there, done it and got the T-shirt' two years ago. It's the slimiest of paths and we didn't need to go down to the stream, cross the bridge which was destroyed in the storms (and subsequently rebuilt) and climb up to the durian orchard beyond. It would have been almost as unpleasant as the walk along the main road from the Bao Shan orchard turn off which would have followed. 

So we walked out down the regular path, it had taken us barely 3 hours and we had budgeted for 5 hours! So there was no dinner in Sungai Pinang, we would have had to wait over an hour for that and we made alternative arrangements en route home.

We will look at the PRH challenge route from Air Puteh next, it should be more clear now than has been the case once it grew back after their last assault on it - that will be Part 2a. However, my main reason for doing it will be to try to use another path up the middle of the upper valley which for some reason we have yet to experience.

The rest of the assumed route to Teluk Bahang will presumably have involved going over Bukit Laksamana, which I have covered elsewhere in a number of postings, Back Door to Laksamana, Titi Kerawang Express, Bukit Laksamana Revisited and Rimba Ridge among others. These are effectively off limits for us now as the downhill sections would put too much strain on Yuehong's bad knee.