Sunday ride on Mengkuang Dam back road

By Turbo Snail.

I have been invited to Katak's ride for a couple of times, and I always have other important agendas to prevent me from joining.  I have heard that he "discovered" quite a number of "new" trails in BM.  One of them is the much talk about(I mean in mainland) Bukit Teh XC trail.  So this time I make it a point to join him when he called me on Saturday afternoon about his Mengkuang Dam back road ride.

I was reluctant at first.  Sunday ride on Mengkuang Dam?  But he convinced me that we would explore into an area that I had never been before.  Immediately, the mentioned of the place I had never been before really caught me in full ears.  It was definitely more attractive than the same old Penang hill ride done by the KOTRTs.  You see, what I like about mountain biking is I can always explore strange new world(ahem, sound like Captain James T. Kirk now<grin>), I mean trail on my trustworthy though not expensive Diamondback.  If you ask me to go to the same old place over and over again, I will get bored and leave.  Hey, I am an engineer.  Engineer likes new ideas, new toys right???  I know there are cases, especially in Penang, that engineers do not have engineering degree but work as engineers. Then those bugger will be happy what they are offered. Anyway, I told Katak I would be at the meeting point at 8.30am on Sunday morning.  SMS-ed few fellow riders, all cakap nak buat recce in Penang Hill.  Ok lah.

Arrived at the meeting place saw only a few riders showed up.  I was surprise to see Mantap was there too.  I think he was also the same: attracted to the promise by Katak that he would lead us into a place that we never been before.  Before the ride, we were briefed by Katak that the trail was going to be 80% rideable only.  We would have to back to our own feet for the remaining 20%  But if we insisted, we could the remaining.

We started the ride after the last two showed up.  It was 9.00am.  We were led by Katak to cut into a single tarmac lane, which led us into a singletrack that cleary was a kampung trail frequent used by villagers.  There was just a normal ride on a singletrack.  About five minutes later, we were at the junction to a wider tarmac road.  The tarmac road was actually the road that led to the back of the Mengkuang Dam.  It used to be dirt track all the way.  Apparently, some smart ass from the Municipal council decided that tarmac would easier access to the dam.  Man, the old rocky trail was gone, forever!

The new trail, as promised by Katak did not appear until we reached the section we were supposed to climb up to 1/4 of BM hill.  There was another trail going down after the hut that we used to mark the beginning of the climb.  I noticed the trail before but never realized it was actually going somewhere.  Imemdiately we were greeted by rocky downhill slope.  Faint hearted would sure come down and push the bike.  I tried but I nearly tumbled over!  After the rocky section we were riding on a narrow and twisty singletrack.  On certain section of the trail, it reminded me of Bukit Kiara trail.  In fact, in some section there were actually felt like Bukit Kiara trail!

We reached our first obstacle when we cycled about 15 minutes.  A tree fell over the trail, and we had to come down and shove our bike to the other before we climbed over.  Oh yeah, did I mentioned spiders in this area were much smaller than the ones Fatt and I saw in Batu Kawan???  They are same species but much smaller in size.  Those ones in Batu Kawan were really a mutant!

We reached the end of the Bukit Kiara like trail after we passed two more obstacles.  The rest was a smooth riding back to Sungai Lembu road and back to the meeting point.  Time taken to do the loop: 2 hours.  Time well spent? Of course.  The trail was awesome.  Best of all, we were riding under shade for most of the time.  Oh yeah, my frequent riding on roadie has improved my riding skill on mountain bike as well.  There is this slope that I used to struggle on my trusty Erzulie on 34-28.  This time, I managed to clear that section on 44-19!

This is definitely not the trail for newbies, those who don't like their MTB dirty(I always sneer at those people who don't like to dirty their MTB.  Go buy roadie lah!), or those who don't like spiders and leeches(this is mountain biking for god sake!).  But if you like Bukit Kiara, you will find this trail a fun to ride!

I really thank Katak for taking me to this excellent trail. We were talking about doing our next ride some time next month. I am thinking about doing a ride on Bukit Teh. I'll keep you guys posted!

Alan aka Turbo Snail