Batu Kawan - A rediscovery ride

By Turbo Snail.

I have been hearing about the destruction of Batu Kawan trail due to the ongoing jetty construction. Even my high school buddy told me that the cement trail that goes up to the Celcom tower is not accessible anymore. Of course, I remain sceptical about the claims since I do not see it myself. So, I decided to give it a visit in one of the three day Deepavali weekends last week. It turned out the trail is not totally destroyed. Almost 2/3 of the trail were still intact. Also, more surprises as we reached the Celcom tower.

I met Fatt at 9am, and the ride began at 9.30am. We began our ride by checking out the cement pavement. The trail is still there. But due to the presence of heavy machinery coming in and out made it unwiseable to go in. We decided to use alternate route to go up, which is the off road trail at the back hill. The trail was wet and sticky. I found myself put up extra effort to get my bike going. The big knobbies didn't help so much. At few occassion, the real wheel gave way. I would have to spin faster in order to stay up right. The trail condition showed that it is frequent use by others. Proof: Adsence of big spiders and cob webs. Along the way I also saw empty shells on the ground. It must be left by the wild boar hunter. It took me about half an hour to work my ass out to the tower. Well, not bad for someone for the past one year touches his  lunch...err...wife more than his MTBs...;) Oh yeah, not far away from the tower, we saw a branch off going somewhere down the hill. I took a mental note that I would pay it a visit some time.

We took a short break. Decision had to be made if we should go down via cement pavement or the back hill. Looking at the time, and we were eager to go back to our cozy hut, we decided to visit the back hill some other time.  We saw another branch off on our left before we reached the platform at mid hill. I suspect this trail would connect to the exit I saw before the tower. Again, I took a mental note that I would check it out in the near future.

We reached the foothill at around 10.45am. We met few other mountain bikers whom we were not familiar with. I took the initiative to talk to them. Found out that they were from Teluk Air Tawar, which is close to Kepala Batas. My hats off to them! They told me also that they normally rode with Albert. No wonder I didn't know them since I seldom ride with Albert!

As I mentioned above, I am planning to re-visit Batu Kawan again. I will try to find out if I could link the new trail to the existing ones in the backhill. I hope I would be able to create a two hour ride loop, which would make the visit of Batu Kawan by you guys a worthwhile one.

I will keep you posted!

Discovery rides in the pipe line:

1. Batu Kawan "exploration" - to check out the new trails I "discovered" from the last ride.

2. Juru - Sungai Burung fire track - it is basically a flat single track. Distance can be as long as 100km round trip, off road!

3. Bukit Gambier - Possible link between Bukit Gambier and Bukit Jambul? Andy?

Regards
Turbo Snail
Email: turbosnail@imap-mail.com
ICQ: 1312902