Adventure page

Waterfalls Galore, January 2012

We have just entered the Chinese Lunar year of the Water Dragon, so it is an auspicious sign that in the past weeks I have made five waterfall trips!

On 11-1 I visited Kanching with my Dutch friend Paul. Eight(!) years ago I had hidden a Geocache near the top waterfall of Kanching. Geocaching is not a very popular sport in Malaysia and in those eight years the geocache has been found only fifteen times. The last geocacher reported that the container was leaking and the content wet. Maintenance was needed.
So that was the target of the trip, but to make it more interesting I decided to guide Paul to two upper tiers, which are almost virtually unknown. No trail, simple river trekking. The two tiers are not spectacular, but nice and unspoilt. That can not be said of the main Kanching falls. In spite of Joe Yap's Save our Waterfalls campaigns, there is still a lot of rubbish lying around.

Back at the top fall, I found the geocache and replaced the container and the old log. From the top fall you have a nice view of the surroundings.

A few days later I took Aric, Keong and Jim to the Kerling waterfall. This is a surprisingly impressive waterfall, near to the road, but you have to scramble down a steep slope to reach it, so not many people are aware of the fall. Here is a YouTube video of this waterfall.

The next destination was a waterfall near Ipoh. As webmaster of the Waterfalls of Malaysia site, I regularly get email about waterfalls that are not yet included. In this case Ulu Chepor, near Jelepang. A recreational park, with shelters, stalls, a surau etc. From the park, a clear trail follows the stream. Several cascades, and two nice waterfalls.

On 18-1 I went to the Gerehang fall with Richard and Keong. This fall was recently discovered by the Waterfall Survivors, more or less accidentally, they wanted to go to the Strata fall, but got lost...:-). With directions given by Siang Hui it was no problem to reach the fall, first following a trail, the last part river trekking. The water flow was not very big, but the surroundings pristine. Here is a YouTube video of this waterfall

One week later, on the third day of the Chinese New Year a grand finale! In the Bubu range, south of Kuala Kangsar there is a waterfall in the Gebol river, Lata Batu Pecah. No signage. Siang Hui had discovered on Google Earth that there was another waterfall a few hundred meters upstream.
Together with Nick and Harry he wanted to explore this fall and he asked me to join. I accepted the inivtation, although I was a bit worried wether I could follow these experienced jungle trekkers.

From near Manong a small road leads to a kind of camp, where we parked the car.
The trail to Lata Batu Pecah was an easy one. Nice waterfall. But from there just following the river was not possible, too steep. Siang Hui decided to backtrack up the slope, then chop his way along the slope in the direction of this upper fall. It took us about one hour, for me it was quite tough, but I managed..:-)

And the reward was spectacular. What a beauty. Here is the YouTube video.
As we have no idea about the local name for the fall, we have for the time being baptised the fall Lata Naga Air, the Water Dragon Fall. On our way back, we found vague traces of a trail and even an old waterpipe.
Back at the camp we took a bath, before going back home, very satisfied!