May 11, 2013

walk the torq: trusting the ropes unconditionally

note: regression (2011)

a lot of people who have climbed mt kinabalu told me to take the ferrata package to make our kinabalu experience complete. with madam wong's assistance, i booked the walk the torq package with mountain torq

it's been a while since i last held a rope and a harness. my last rappelling activity was summer of 2011, which was so many months from november 2011. good thing though, roland of mountain torq did a refresher. still hungry, all i could remember during the work shop was him yelling, "rope in, rope out!"

after our summit assault, we went to sayat sayat hut for a second briefing. the mountain torq team distributed our equipment and taught us again for the second time. 

sayat sayat hut
view of the trail from sayat sayat hut
starting point of walk the torq
since it was almost rainy season, we did not have much clearing as seen in google when you search for via ferratta in kinabalu. the clouds would uncover the breath-taking view below only a very few times. what i've seen for a few seconds made me realize the value of "rope in, rope out!" 

photos taken by our guide, roland, using my camera



the nasty monkey bridge and the boundless abyss.
despite a few instances of height fright, i did not regret spending extra on the via ferratta package. the only thing that disappointed me, aside from the zero clearing, was the steps were made for caucasians. a 164 cm-tall woman will have to stretch so much just to get to the next step!

according to the mountain torq guides, our team was the fastest to finish the walk the torq at 1 hour and 24 minutes. they said that tourists would normally finish in 2 to 3 hours. the fastest they said was at least 2 hours (i forget the exact figures). i guess what made us finish fast was the absence of a clearing. just imagine the cam whoring we could have done when the sky opened up!

3 comments:

  1. Nice one! An interesting record of finishing up at 1:24, hehe.. you just enjoyed the challenge anyway.. Was that your first po? Pede pa balikan yan next time through Low's peak circuit naman, right? This post, by the way, encouraged me to stick to my original plan of taking the ferrata package in my first time to climb it. Namamahalan kasi ako upon inquiry with the mountain torq. At Na-tetempt din kasi ako na traditional climb na lang as my friend did it solo last year (non-ferrata) and nasa 12k lang daw na-spend nya :) na-excite na ako, late this year kami aakyat :)

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    1. yes... first kong mag wtt niyan at sya yung short segment sa low's peak circuit. sayang kung mag timpohon ka lang. gawin mo na lang na timpohon traverse mesilau via feratta. the wrong thing we did was trekked mesilau first. di namin na enjoy ang view kasi nagmamadali kami for the wtt briefing :( it's not hurtful to spend extra bucks for experience :)

      then there's another trail - kotal's route but that the other side of kk... and another story if ever i get to climb that route :)

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  2. parang masaya 'tong walk the torq.. puro ropes.. parang mas naeexcite ako na eto na lang gawin namin.. hmmm, isip-isip.. hehehe

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