Terence's @rchive

22 July 2006 8:45am, our convoy of 7 cars left Centre Point Bandar Utama to Kuala Kubu Bahru. We took around 1 and a half hours (with some delays @ Rawang toll plaza to wait for all cars to arrive and toilet pit stop @ gas station) to reach the Kuala Kubu Bahru post office, the meeting point with our guides from Tracks Outdoor Adventure.

We then set off from the post office for Sungai Selangor through the road to Frasers Hill by following our guides’ 4×4.

View of the selangor dam from our car. Thanks to the haze and my car’s dirty windscreen the photo looks blur and gloomy.

More gloomy views of the Selangor Dam area.

We reached our destination. This is the location where we will hike down to Sungai Selangor (Selangor River) for Tube Rafting aka Tubing.

Compared to white water rafting, where several people sit in a raft, for tubing, you sit on top a inner tube of a tyre. Each of us paid RM80 for this ride down Sungai Selangor on a tube.

Protective gears are included in the package. In fact the guides will not allow anyone to be on the river without your life jacket and helmet on. Safety is very important on this kind of adventure trip.

Before we start tubing, the drivers of all cars will need to drive their cars to park lower downstream where we will end our tubing because we will not be coming back again. Tracks used a lorry to fetch us back from the place where we parked our cars.

Before the guide starts the safety briefing, we would need to sign the Indemnity Form.

Agnes and I in our gears.

Marjorie Gabriel, the lady in red, aka “River Goddess” on her name card prepares to give us the safety briefing while everyone crowd around her.

Majorie demonstrates the sitting on the tube. You will need to enter a river rapid with your legs 1st. This way you can kick or manoeuvre yourself from rocks. But somehow, from my experience, its not easy to do that as I always enter with my back from sideways due to bumping against rocks or failed to turn in time to enter with legs 1st. You will also need to raise your bum while entering rapids if you don’t want it to scrape against rocks.

If you fall out of your tube, you will need to float with your life jacket and if your tube is still around you, hold on to it beside you. You will need to enter rapids with your legs 1st as your body are not protected by the tube anymore. And raise your bum.

From left, Agnes, Jody, Elaine, Woon Tian and Ai Huey with full set of protective gears.

Off we go. A hike down to Sungai Selangor. I had to pass the camera to one of our guide, there’s no way I can keep the camera from getting wet. Otherwise I would be able to take some shots of the nice scenery of Sungai Selangor upstream.

Me going through one of the tougher rapids. When we approach harder and higher class rapids, the guides will station at crucial points to direct each of us to the correct entry points of the rapid. And we will need to go 1 by 1 as they cannot handle all of us going in together. For milder and safer rapids we can go through them ourself. I fell off my tube 3 times throughout the entire 2-3km tubing. Apart from knocking my elbow to the rocks while manoeuvring through the rapids, I came through without much injury.

Agnes. She got a big bruise on her knees 2 days later.

One of us got swallowed by the rapids. Don’t worry no casulties.

This is the best shot taken by the guide. Full closed up shot of Hoay Ming.

Jonah going down the rapids.

After we finish tubing, we walked around 1.5km back to the place where we parked our cars and the site where we will be Abseiling. We will be abseiling down from this Sungai Chiling Bridge.

Shot of Sungai Chiling taken from the bridge.

Close up shot of Sungai Chiling.

Sungai Chiling flowing into Sungai Selangor.

Tracks prepared fried rice + wild boar curry for lunch. With cool winds blowing strongly, the warm fried rice and wild boar curry taste superbly good. Maybe its due to the coldness, exhaustion and hunger from the earlier tubing but I really liked it.

The ropes are tested repeatedly by the guides. They went several rounds to ensure that the ropes are in good condition.

Mr Raju giving us the safety briefing for abseiling.

Abseiling gears. From left, gloves, harness, figure of eight, carabiner and the helmet.

Mr Raju teaching us how to start abseiling. With our body as the middle point, we need to use our dominant hand to hold onto the lower side of the rope to control the speed of our descent. To stop descending, we need to wrap our dominant arm to our back and tighten our grip on the rope while we straighten our arms and loosen grip on the rope to descent. The other hand just hold on to the upper side of the rope and make sure its not too close to the figure of eight because there’s risk of fingers being caught between it and the rope.

The view looking down from the bridge. Its roughly 20 meters from the ground.

I held on tightly to the bridge as I stepped out to the edge. I was quite scared to let go of my right hand to hold the rope.

After Majorie reassured me that I will not fall, I let go and grab the rope. It wasn’t that bad after all. Got time to smile and take photo. Then comes the next hurdle, taking the plunge. How Mr Raju demostrated was to push yourself away from the bridge, loosen your grip on the rope so that you descent below the bridge and tighten it again to slow down the descending speed. But I went down slowly instead, until I cleared the bridge.

Me hanging on to wait for Agnes.

It was fun hanging in the air. Just need to overcome the initial fears.

Agnes had a tough time climbing back up to the bridge because its a very steep slope and the soil is slippery due to the short rain earlier.

Another view of the steep slope that everyone needs to climb to get back up.

Both of us went for second round. Some of us went repeatedly for 3-5 times. Making their money worth since we all paid RM100 each for abseiling. Agnes and I didn’t go again because we were lazy to put on the harness again. We were sharing the harness because there weren’t enough for each of us.

We ended the abseiling session around 4.30PM. The rest of the convoy went up to Frasers Hill. Agnes and I didn’t follow because Amelia (Agnes’s Sister) was home alone. We took around an hour to reach back to KL.

More shots of the scenery around Selangor Dam taken during my journey back. Its a pity the weather was so hazy and gloomy, otherwise the shots would be much nicer.

It was a very fun trip. I really enjoyed myself. Jac you should have followed us. Next trip, 2 days 1 nite of Canyoning + Rafting + Abseiling + Camping….

Click here to view all pictures of the entire trip

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 25th, 2006 at 3:23 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.