Mount Ophir – Checked!

YogaPeace — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 19:12:13 +0000

It’s been a week after I came back from Mount Ophir.

The climb of Mount Ophir was a true test of will power… through and through!

Before the climb, I was doing my weekly puny Bukit Timah hill climb, trying to train. And all of us on the trip was expecting a relatively simple climb. HAH! It turned out otherwise…

We started climbing at 5am after distributing food amongst all of us ( We bought like 21 bananas, tons of can food like tuna, beans, sausages, peanut butter, kaya, 4 huge loaves of bread, biscuits, snickers and more… ). Almost too dark and it was amazing cool and surreal. I am a person who can’t see well in the dark and I expect this will be a challenge even with head lights. But luckily we have plenty of lights – all of us in the group were totally glowing! This is my first climb in the dark I might add…

I was in Group 2 and boy, was the guide fast. This guy is only 18 years old and he left us feeling really tired and can you imagine how fast we were going? We actually caught up with Group 1 three times! I think either Group 1 was slower due to the darkness or we in Group 2 were really rockin’, we were like “forced” to follow our super fast guide.

When dawn broke at around 7am, we weren’t even half way to the top! Good grief…

And let me tell you… climbing up was NOT even the hard part. For me, it was the coming down part that was the killer. It’s seem never ending way down and my mind was like going “is it ending soon?” every step I took… it’s that bad…

To top it all off, we had someone missing… Oh yes. Someone got lost. Here’s the story again, I think I must have told my account for like the 6th time :
At some point in the downward trek, I was with Dorothy and this new girl I met. There were only 3 of us in the group as the rest was moving behind us. I was in front and both of them were behind me. We were moving slowly primarily because of yours truly, me. I hate going downward and I have this abnormal fear that I am going to slip and tumble over and probably roll down the slope… After a while, I began to feel tired and my knees felt painful and so I decided to let the younger ladies move ahead of me ( bad idea in hindsight… ).

So these ladies being younger and faster, was moving much faster than me. The youngest girl, her name was Sylvia, was very nice and had waited for me several times during their lead. As there was no guide with us, there came several points where we did not know if we were going the right way. There are some strips of tape around some tree trunks to help us along but there were some of pretty hard to see indicators at times.

There came a part of the path where instead of going downwards, the indications pointed moving upwards. All 3 of us were really unsure at that point. So Sylvia suggested she go up to check it out first and we agreed. So she went up a bit and shouted down to us that she can see some indicator but it was on the floor. So me and Dorothy shouted back and asked her to stay put while we wait for the group behind us to catch up and to ask the guide for confirmation. She heard us and waited up there. Soon the group behind caught up and the guide gave us the green thumb that “UP” is right.

So we shouted back to her that it was correct path up. And she began moving… she was very fast as she was young ( maybe early twenties? ) and very soon, Dorothy and me lost sight of her. It did not worry us much then as the path was pretty clear and it was easy to follow until we came to one point. It was a long path, one way up and one way down. It was easy to assume to be going up as we traveled up so far although the base camp was supposed to be down. But then I insisted that we wait for the guide to confirm. When the group caught up, we confirmed with the guide that the path was down as opposed to going up. At this point, I had a nagging suspicion that Sylvia had went up. I was worried but my knees were hurting and I was really tired. So I told the organizer my suspicion and he quickly asked the guide to check. To my surprise, the guide said someone saw her going down. Doubts? Yes, I had but since they say they saw ( cos I knew one of the guides was hitting on her… ) her going down, then maybe she is already heading the right way.

Anyway fast forward, several long painful hours later, we reached the base camp. All us bumped out and tired. Then I started to ask if anyone seen Sylvia. I asked the organizer too. Then he realized that no one had seen her!

And so…. immediately some guides were sent up to find her. At 3:30pm, they found her. And they started making their way back… but the rain had started. I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been to be raining and to trek down the steep slope! But I am thankful that they finally found her.

So moral of the story – stay with the group! If in doubt, wait for guide! Never play hero…

But it was truly cool to be traveling with some of best buddies, Shirley, Dorothy, Felicia and my Anusara teacher, Bo! Though the climb was tough ( it WAS TOUGH for me coming down… think my knees almost broke… ), it was worth it just for the experience and the time spent with friends.

Would I do it again?

Maybe not… perhaps another path then maybe… but I don’t think I would go the same path twice!

~Namaste! Til the next moountain adventure!

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Mount Ophir – Checked!