Gunung Ledang ( Mt Ophir) Johore Highest Mountain July 24 2016 Sunday

    Mt Ophir ( 1276m)  or Gunung Ledang 
climb had been brewing in me for quite some time. Then there was a group of people heading towards Tangkak with 2D1N stay at Ledang Resort and the plan was hatched.  How nice! Piggy back on this outing we are going for a same day climb and descent.

   After reading blogs and internet resources of this mountain .. terms like KFC ( Killer fitness centre) and images of ladders and more ladders ,and the rope climb on steep slope stuck firmly in my head. A same day plan was finalised. 

G Ledang location - not far from Johore-Malacca boundary. 6 hours bus away from Singapore. 

What about the weather forecast..... I recall the mountain forecast i used for my KK climb. Here is the date we have chosen and viola - Good weather sandwiched between thunder storm. Sunday is good on am and pm. And i expect we will exit forest late afternoon.   ( actual : early morning we had heavy start-stop-start-stop shower in Ledang Resort around 5-6am but sunshine all the way to afternoon when it started to drizzle ) 

 GPS tracks.transversing the contours. Trek started from bottom straight up and loop to the top left to get to the summit. . Continue the loop right will take u down and descend straight down. I left the portable gps at my backpack. should have use it to mark every CP#.. 

Elevation chart to show the steepness of the ascend and descent. We trekked a total of 14.7 km up and down

The red trunk tree stood out starkly from the others. It had flaking barks.  It remind me of the Australian eucalyptus species. 

Large boulders some as tall as 3-man-height strewn along the trail. A similar sight as in the waterfall trail near Gunung Ledang Resort. (  Bukit Timah also had similar large boulder ). Are they left behind by remote ICEAge ?

View from the top of the lush forested covered slopes and the low clouds. 

Taman Bonsai - where the trees are dwarfed and wind-swept branches twisted 

Looking back from the Red stone. We left our bags there and have to climb down the ladder walk over there to retrieve, Note the white ropes were tied round a stone outcrop there.

Summit at CS7 with a heavy vandalised marker post.   ... we didnt walk to  CS8 at the tower end. 

Climbed up this pipe ladder you reach another flat area.

Another view with more rock outcrop

Tower shrouded in clouds and a short while later all clouds were dissipated. - see below

Purple little flower shaped like a balsam

Mushrooms sprang  from fallen rotten logs

Aluminium non rusty ladder make ascend much quicker and safer provided of course the ladders are anchored properly.

Ladder is not too bad just naik lah

I WANT my KFC... of a different kind - Killer Fitness Centre

This beetle rowed into a ball when I disturbed it. It slowly unwinding...

Unknown Berries.

A round stone sitting on top  a bigger bolder. 

The RED square tag marked the route to continue the ascend

THere are 774 steps i was told.. but our normal staircase training at Toa Payoh 40 storey routine (x6-x8) greatly exceeded this. So no sweat. At least at the beginning stage.