Its amazing how 2012 flew pass! I usually set out a whole lot of goals before the year starts and will check them off the tick list. Before the year comes to an end I will be constantly checking back and (usually) frantically trying to finish whatever i can finish and pass those I can’t finish on to the following year. This year I set out to achieve 10 goals and a quick check back on these goals I probably achieved 5 of them and will add another 2 to the tick list before the year ends. Well, nothing wrong with not being able to achieve all your goals for the year but this year climbing goals are clearly missing from it.
That’s unusual for me since I have a long term goal before I turn 30 (in a month’s time) for climbing. So clearly I’m not going to be able to achieve that and will have to postpone it to a year later in 2013 during our Mega trip.
That being said, Kelly and I realized we haven’t gone on a climbing trip for sometime and try to send something. We have been traveling a great deal(by some people’s standards) but never had the time to hang out and send a project or workout something. So we decided to head to KL, Batu Caves and get some cragging good time in. This trip is kind of last minute with Jill from Phuket and Weida who had just finished his reservist joining us. Same shit different weekend, we left Singapore on Friday evening took my good old trusty Proton up the NS highway and crashed in The Uptown Boutique Hotel.
Saturday. 0900hrs.
Nasi Lemak Breakfast and we shot off to Batu Caves straight to Nyamuk wall. I was telling Jill that no one visits Nyamuk wall as there is so much mosquitos there and blah blah blah and BAM! 1 group of 5 Malaysians, 1 group of 3 Singaporeans and another group of god know how many farangs. I felt like a dick for talking too much.. Haha So embarrassing !
It was the usual warm ups and off we went to try to classic route Chess, 7a. There is this intimidating triangle shape roof and a prominent hand crack that leads to the top. Kelly is the rope gun so she put up the draws for 2 warm ups and the Chess. I would say Kelly did the roof pretty easy until she reach the crack, there is no particular move that she had problems with and just had to link up the moves. Jill had a go at the route on top rope and did pretty well despite not climbing for the last 2 weeks.
We got off for an early end and head off for dinner and some drinks at Ginza.
Sunday. Day 2. 0930hrs
Everyone woke up with dark eye rings and still hung over from the bottle of vodka we had last night. We went for breakfast at Annie 1 and had wanton noodle which tasted so fabulous! I went for double portion and opted to skip lunch =D
Went back to Nyamuk Wall, this time we got on a nice gentle steep wall with thin crimps and blank face the route is Pear, 7a. Heard from a lot of climbers that it’s a sequenced crimp fest and the problem is you can’t really read the moves from the ground. All of us fell at the crux except for Kelly, who crushed the crux on her flash attempt but took a giant whipper after her foot slipped before clipping the draws after the crux! The whipper put a purple spot on her ass and she’s not really keen to climb the route after that. I can imagine how much it hurts! We climbed till about 1830hrs and head back to shower before going to Little Yum Yum for some great Nyonya food with Marcus (local food guide). We all slept pretty early on Sunday evening.
We chill out to some coffee on Monday morning at a nice chick cafe named Wonder Milk. Great cup cakes and coffee before we head to camp 5 to crush ourselves with more climbs before heading back to Singapore.
It was a great weekend, for the company, good and drinks. Most importantly, Kelly and I agreed that we were so caught up with things in Singapore that we did not have time to hang out at the crag to work on and send routes for a long time like these. I agree with her and we will be planning a mega holiday in 2013 for this and also back to Yosemite again! Those Yosemite aspiring climbers, this is your great chance to put your trad skills to use and climb some long multi pitches and for those who are new to trad climbing, don’t worry we got something planned for you!
Looking forward to 2013 with new goals! I hope you feel the same too!
Qxadventures 