12 April 2019
To hell with the rain
Climbing Ma on Shan in pouring rain from Ma on Shan station
My title today keeps with the religious theme.
It is raining. I thought it would surely just rain briefly and not very hard. Wrong on both counts. Very wrong. I stubbornly went to Ma on Shan, pretty much the highest mountain in Hong Kong, or at least this half of Hong Kong.
I expected a well maintained well signposted path to the top, easy to do in the rain. Also wrong on all counts. But by now I was in for a penny, in for a million pounds.
For quite a few hours, I got completely saturated, and pulled myself up rocks and cliffs, getting covered in mud. My camera started to get wet inside, the lense started to get foggy, rain got on the lense, so do not expect good photos today. I guess it does not really matter since the photos were mainly of the fog and rain. Also dont expect good photos any day, all my photos are average at best, and clearly hated by my mother.
I elected to retrace my steps to get back down from Ma on Shan, so that I would not risk getting lost in the fog. This required putting on my cool gloves and sliding down cliffs while slowing my fall using trees. Of course every time I grabbed a tree about a litre of water fell on me.
My shoes filled up with water, and then my phone activated itself in my wet pocket and basically phoned everyone I know (message bank, idiots anonymous), opened every website in the world and launched all my banking apps transferring my money to random people. Excellent work!
So I was quite happy to get back to the subway, it was now raining even harder than before, and people on the train moved away from me, also excellent! Once back in my room it was time for a long shower to remove all the mud and to try and dry out my clothes, electronics, shoes, self.
This is actually the view out of my hotel window. Unfortunately the window does not open. My hotel is built into the side of the cliff that runs along one side of a small part of Nathan road near Mong Kok.
The subway station that marked the start and end of my trip is about as far away from central Hong Kong as possible, however it still exits into a megamall. Inside there were actually quite a few restaurants open for breakfast, which is very cool. I lined up for a freshly made custard egg tart.
Here are just a few of the thousands of apartments in this recently constructed suburb. You can see the mountains behind it, in the fog. I was in denial at this point.
Cool looking mountains, cool looking fog, cool looking sewage treatment plant, lets go!
The path up to the start of the trail was a concrete goat track, and everything that you are no longer allowed to throw out with the normal garbage is illegally dumped along here. Tyres, medical waste, batteries, mattresses, halogen lighting, fridges.
There was shit dumped everywhere for a couple of km.
I was glad to leave the rubbish behind and get on a trail, which was rubbish free, but too steep for rubbish to accumulate on.
That sign doesnt apply to me. It is actually a bit confusing, the official government website lists this trail as a recommended but difficult trail, and yet all the way along it, no entry signs.
A bit of view before ascending into the fog.
Despite not being that high, due to the steepness, it looked very high today.
Fog approaches.
I would be heading that way, into the fog, and rain, and mud.
Bonus pre fog shots.
I actually thought the technical parts of the climb were behind me, but no, they kept coming, lets scale a cliff in the rain!
Ascend a cliff into the fog.
Then a rope appeared, with a few bits of half arsed string hanging from the bottom of it. I tried not to trust the rope!
Complete fog by now.
Between some of the peaks it was a very dense forest, with flowers.
I believe this is the summit proper. No summit marker to know for sure, but I checked on google and the altimeter on my fancy watch. Time to turn around.
I realised at one of the other peaks I had failed to do the angry selfie, so here it is. Also it was time to put my gloves on!
Every now and then the fog would part briefly, and I would scramble to take my gloves off and take a photo. Usually the fog returned before I could take the shot.
Last one for today, after this point everything was just too wet to bother trying!