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General Climbing Discussion

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The ‘Where are they now?’ thread. 25-Sep-2019 At 9:09:13 PM Stugang

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Actually the trip to tioman was awesome. We did the second route up a massive granite cliff « Mumbar » Our route was just under 200m vertical gain but prolly more like 220m of actual climbing. The cliff would comfortably be over 300m at the highest point.

Route was all trad and grade 20ish but we bolted rap anchors. In the scheme of things the climbing was the easy part - schlepping all the food, gear and water up to the base uphill through virgin tropical rainforest was epic. I was still digging 1cm long splinters out of my legs months after the trip. Camping at the base in hammocks under tarps for four days with barely any food and water was truly an experience never to be forgotten and bought out the best in our small team and through shared misery reckon I’ve made friends for life with all of them......apart from one guy that pissed everyone off who had the attitude that we were all there to support him in achieving his goals and if that meant that some team members didn’t get to climb then «that was their problem for not being comfortable leading runout trad». Despite the fact that they had busted their arse in jungle and experienced every moment of pain in helping with logistics in setting up a jungle camp and getting all our various bits of kit up through the through the jungle to the base of the climb.

I will never forget the fury that I was met with in various German profanities when I refused to do another climb with him until we (as the most experienced climbers) had got the whole team up the original climb.

Funny thing is that after it was over and we’d all got back to basecamp on the beach i was pretty chilled with our « differences » up on the wall as it was pretty testing up there and it’s understandable that people lose their shit in those circumstances - we were all on the edge through dehydration and lack of food.

So all water under the bridge until a week or so later when safely back in Singapore and I asked for a couple of slings back that I loaned him to hold up his hammock. Then he lost his shit again.

Despite the «moments» it was a great trip with a mostly awesome bunch of folk. If any of you are in Singapore or Malaysia you should seriously think about putting a climbing trip to Tioman on your schedule - it is like nothing you would have experienced before. You don’t need to go as epic as our trip - the dragons horns have a well established path to the base and at least a dozen established routes between grades 16 and 26 (also some aid routes). Hit me up if you are keen and I will either go with you or give you all the beta you need for a successful trip.

Stay safe out there xx stu.