A Knight’s Tale: Penang Hill Trail – Suffering for a Loop that Never Existed (17 Jan 2010)

Sunday morning, while many just laze in bed or enjoy their favorite bowl of laksa, roti chanai with their loved ones, 8 buggers decided to get up early to cycle up Penang Hill. They rather haul their @$$ up the crazy gradients all in the name of a workout. More like sadistic regime aimed at creating more pain – but we luuurve the pain!

The 8 cyclists who volunteered share the agony were Andrew, Azmi, David, Jane, Jason Teh, Jason Lee, Sunny and myself. However, Sonny, had to pull out due to a bad knee just after the Viaduct Road fork, climbing up the jeep track.

 The trail planned was to go up all the way to the peak (Called 168) via the jeep track, then go down via Canopy walk, connect to K6, then to K5 then up again to Viaduct Road, down Poison Arrow, out to 84 Hut, take the off-road to 47 and finish back at Youth Park, coming down via the jeep track. This would’ve been an interesting ride since we had not done this for a long time.

Of course, the trail leader had his signals crossed about the trail that he planned out but let’s not spoil the story too early.

GI Jane was in her element leading the pack up the jeep track. We regrouped halfway at the 84 Tea house but the regular caretaker Ah Kit (not sure how to spell his name) was nowhere around. We didn’t spend too much time there, about 10 minutes, to grab some O² and H₂O before continuing with those killer inclines.

Going up the second half, I had to stop a couple of times pulling more oxygen. One was around the 100 mark, and another at Grace Dieu’s bungalow before the other super-killer climb. Whatever it was, I managed to reach the top safely and in good time too! I checked my watch - it seemed that I had completed the ride up Penang Hill in an hour and a half…..or less!

Another plus, I managed to cycle up the crazy inclines just before the 47 hut and at Grace Dieu’s bungalow.

Yippeeeeeeeeeeeee! Now I am hungry!

Food was at our usual makan stalls – got my favorite nasi lemak from the makcik. While some of the other guys ordered the fried koay teow while there was an order of nasi goreng as well. Of course nothing is complete without the whole barrel of drinks. That’s why the shops at Penang Hill like to see hikers and bikers up there, because we will definitely order tons of food and drinks…. or is that limited to the KOTRT people???

Pain equals hunger equals food and drinks equals more pain equals…. this formula is never-ending! 

During the makan session, I mentioned the reason for taking this trail for today – it was to see if we could use this for KL 2010. Azmi also threw in a few suggestions and David mentioned about having the starting point elsewhere apart from Youth Park. 

Sorry don’t want to mention too many details in the story. Otherwise, word will leak out… 

Anyway, the crux was to explore this trail and see how much suffering it could potentially cause for KL2010. 

All this while Azmi, who knows Penang Hill trails like the back of his hand, looked bewildered with my description of the K5 loop connecting back to Viaduct Road and on to Poison Arrow. He couldn’t figure out my explanation of the trail but was game to try it. He was convinced I knew the way….

This path down was a nice singletrack. Mostly cement and concrete mix, it gently curved around the hill slopes. What’s more it was dry so there were no scary slippery patches like the times encountered during the rainy season. Coupled with moss, it can be quite scary for a lot of us. Today’s trail was great!

However, it had one surprise climb for the unsuspecting and a comic relief!

I was coming down fast on one of the sections; as I was gaining speed, I looked up and saw the climb up but couldn’t change my gears in time – was stuck in the middle cog set and it was too heavy to pedal up. Behind me, I could hear Azmi shouting, “Faster! Faster!”,

Not wanting to let the chaps lose their momentum, I quickly got off the bike and started running up the slope as fast as I could.

Instead of hearing pedals cranking, I heard this burst of laughter like they’ve seen some Charlie Chaplin comedy happening in front of them.

What happened? Well, they were laughing at how fast I ran up the slope when I heard Azmi shouting, “Faster! Faster!”.

There’s always a cartoon in everyone…

When we got to the Middle Station, I began looking for the path back to Viaduct Road. I was actually looking for a sign or direction board that pointed us back to Viaduct Road. Seeing that, Azmi mentioned that to go up to Viaduct Road we should have not come all the way down to the Middle Station but connect from Canopy Walk straight to the Viaduct Road.

Oops! Thought there was another way.

So do we turn back or continue down K5?

To go back means to ride back up, suffering more, and it was almost 12 noon. So we decided to continue down K5, aka Hye Keat estate.

We got to the foot of the trail around, did a short road-ride back to Youth Park and reached there around 12.30pm – total riding distance was 21km.

Since a few of the guys didn’t drive, we car-pooled in 3 cars – Andrew in David’s car, Jane drove with Jason Lee, while I took Azmi and Jason Teh but had four bikes; three on the roof of my Rondo and one inside.

We headed to Passion’s of Kerala at New World Park where we also bumped into Adrian and his misses. They were having lunch at the Nyonya restaurant. Anyway, the ride really whooped up our appetites and we really had a very passionate feast of South Indian cuisine!!!

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurp!

What can I say? Eat to ride, ride to eat!!!

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