Kanching Mission(s)

The Kanching waterfalls near Rawang belong to my favourites. Near to KL, easy access. Many tiers, clear paths lead to the lower ones, the upper falls are more adventurous and require some scrambling. I have visited these falls numerous times, it has always been a pleasure.

Yesterday I went again, this time with my friends Paul and Fahmy. For pleasure, but also with a mission. Actually two missions…:-). In 2003 I have hidden a geocache near the upper Kanching Fall. No idea what geocaching is? You can find an introduction on my website: What is Geocaching. In those days I was quite active in this “sport”, nowadays I have lost interest a bit, but I still maintain two geocaches, one in Bukit Kiara and the other one at Kanching Falls . The Kanching one has been found (“logged” is the term) about 50 times, but the last geocacher reported that he had found the location, but the geocache container was missing.

So I had to visit Kanching again, check if the cache had disappeared and if so, replace it with a new container. That was mission 1.

When my friend Joe Yap heard that I was going to Kanching, she asked me if I could report to her about the “cleanliness” of the place. Pollution is a problem for many, if not most, Malaysian waterfalls, too many irresponsible visitors leave their rubbish behind. Joe has organised many waterfall clean-up operations, for example this one in 2010: Major clean-up at Kanching Waterfalls.

She is organising another one to Kanching soon and wanted to know if there was still a lot of rubbish. That was mission 2.

A long introduction. Here is the picture story. When we arrived at the car park around 10 pm, we where a bit surprised that it was so busy already and that the prices had gone up (but what else is new in Malaysia..haha).  Now even including GST! For locals RM 2.12, expats RM 5:30 !  But the place was well kept, clean toilet, some food stalls, a surau

From the car park you follow a cemented trail to the first tiers. Numbering waterfall tiers is not always easy..:-). I follow here the counting of my WoM site,

After the 3rd tier, recently a fence has been built, but without access gate. Strange. Do they want to block access to the upper falls? The cemented steps continue to the 4th tier, before crossing on a bridge. Until here you are in the maintained part of the park, dustbins here and there, not much pollution. Sadly that changes in the upper part of Kanching.:-( I found several places with rubbish.

After about one hour hiking from the car park we reached the upper fall. Fortunately no other people there, so I had time to check the geocache and replace it..:-).

Of course we also took a bath in the top fall and enjoyed the view. Cold water, very clear. A nice location to take pictures.

There are two more tiers, but far upstream, we decided to skip them, maybe we will go again another time. On our way down I found some more rubbish. How can people do that? But we also found two very cute fairy dwellings! No idea who took the trouble to create these miniature houses along the trail. Almost back a monkey family was watching us, if we would leave some of our ice cream for them.

A nice trip!