Last night I celebrated my birthday. Or I got to celebrate my birthday the way I wanted to.
41 is not known as a "landmark" year. Hardly the need to have a massive party or celebration. But birthdays are special. Each day deserves to be marked. There are so many new experiences…why shouldn’t we be giving them a go?
I love hiking. I love being outdoors, and just walking.
I am also enjoying getting back into more “adventure” stuff, which has been rather dormant since the prodigies arrived.
So for my birthday, I wanted to do a night hike.
You would be surprised how many people this does not appeal to.
Why would you do that? People were asking me, and were surprised when I told them it was my idea.
I asked about 12 friends, and only three were interested and wanting to come. Dear Tara wasn’t even that interested, but she knew that a lot of people had dropped out. So she determined to stick it through and try something new. Emily, my friend who is a great marathoner. Terri, who is leaving for the Philippines in the morning. She came.
There have been plenty of things I have edged away from, and I don’t blame people for not coming if this was not their thing. I just find it incomprehensible, because this is so my thing!
Tara’s husband planned the route with me. Pessimistically, I allowed for six hours to do 15 kms. I wasn’t sure about the Night Factor, how slow we would be and what the path would be like at night. Andrew helped plan a trail that didn’t have too many stairs. Also, we were avoiding illegal immigrants, animals, and likelihoods of wrong turns, please!
Wednesday I walked through the trail with Terri’s brother David who was visiting for a while. We saw a snake and we made one wrong turn, and it took us 3.10 or so. Not bad for a first run. We took it really slow, and I took lots of pictures but at one point David said, “at night, everything is going to look the same!!”
Today, I filled up my camel back, put in bandages, the map, and asked Charles for his rugby whistle, just in case we got lost and needed to whistle for help. “As if the search and rescue wouldn’t hear four women talking!” he exclaimed. Not a scathing comment, but a wondering comment.
And we gathered. Just the four of us. Talked about headlights, shone headlights in each others eyes, chatted about snakes, falling, what time we might finish, snakes, bla bla bla!
Charles drove us to our starting point, at the Wilson Trail. We took a picture and started off. Climbed about 140 steps and turned left, hugging the hill. After climbing the steps, it was suggested that we might like to stretch first. Oh RIGHT!!!
From the beginning, Tara made it clear that she didn’t like spiders. Terri was also in that group.
Approximately 30 minutes in, with Emily leading the way, Terri and I spotted a snake. This snake was barely a teenager. It was a snake wearing a training bra and just starting to need deodorant, if you know what I mean. And it was right in front of us. We said, “Girls!” And we stopped, and everyone looked at the snake who was not impressed at the headlights being shone at him. (Poor little dote). Took a picture, then we moved on.
Next Terri spotted a tree frog. Extremely cute! Tara looked at it, and said, “Hmmm.” And kept walking.
We kept going. When we had started, the headlamps weren’t necessary. By 45 minutes in, they were very necessary.
I didn’t know about everyone else, but I was having the time of my life. It wasn’t creepy, but it was unusual. I don’t know the woods like this. It was getting misty. It was quite, quite amazing.
We finished the first portion of our hike and climbed maybe another 100 steps to meet up with our next junction. Perfect. This was the most precarious bit as we really needed to “lean into the hill” as the path was really close to the drop. (and it is a very far drop).
We were doing a pretty good time.
About one kilometer before we reached Parkview, right when we were discussing swear words and children, we heard a rustling to the right of us. Emily was already ahead, but Terri, Tara and I swung our heads round and focused on the rustling area. We saw an animal with shiny eyes (possibly the effect of having three headlamps shone on it?) and thick tail and body, right up in a tree. Very high up in a tree. Tara thought it was a monkey, I thought it was a lemur, and Terri thought it wasn’t a cat. V V V V cool.
At Parkview there was a very sweet surprise, Tara brought out my “Birthday Cake”. It was two brownies, moist and delicious, and we lit candles and I was serenaded! Yay! We all had a scoop and then kept on going.
It was here that Terri left us. She had been a superhero and come along, even though she was leaving the next day for the Philippines (where Charles is right now! Xoxo) and needed to get home. We were in good time, 90 minutes or so gone.
The three of us continued on. Emily confessed she had gone first because she was clearing the spider webs away. What a trooper!
We found Lady Clementi’s ride, and we started up those steps, and on our path. This was really foggy with lots of deciduous branches hanging down. Some uneven steps but not too bad. We were making good time, but Tara requested that I make swimming motions with my arms so that I got all the spider webs.
Quite early in, we heard a BIG NOISE. Not like a tree falling, but rustling along a path noise.
We all swung our headlamps towards the noise and Emily said, “It is two big dogs”. And it did look like dogs, except they weren’t. They were porcupines. Quills tipped white, and massive. As far as porcupines go, these were the Hounds of the Baskervilles. REALLY BIG! It was so neat watching them as they hustled down the path. Noisy little twosome and let’s talk about LONG quills!
Keeping going. Tara saw a jumping spider.
We got busy talking and I stopped paying attention. The trail got thinner, and the overhang grew closer. The trail became uphill, made it look more of a bush whacker path, than the Lady Clementi Ride. I started wondering where I had gone wrong. Up we went and I stopped and confessed to the ladies that this seemed odd. They agreed. I wondered where it had been that I made my mistake. Bloody! They suggested we turn back to get on a wider path. I was still walking, but said “the thing is, I think it just might look different at night”. I kept walking, and boom, encountered a sight. We were on the Hong Kong path. We had done nothing wrong.
Worth noting is I had started off the night wearing a long sleeve shirt. By now I was down to a tank top and my ¾ length hiker pants. Emily was in a t-shirt, Tara in a long shirt but we all agreed it was pretty hot. It was a perfect night for hiking.
I thanked them for coming along. If they hadn’t have come along, I wouldn’t have been able to do this. It was so great of them to do this, and we weren’t done yet.
We kept going, along the HK trail, and soon connected up to the Aberdeen Upper Reservoir Road. This last stretch was less than .5 km of uphill, and would take us to Wanchai. I smelt a funny skunk smell, but it could have been the plants.
A few more minutes, and then, we were done! Night hike 2011 was over, and it was time for celebrations! Time for happy feet or a drink? And we had plenty to celebrate, we had finished in 3 hours. A very good time. We weren’t really pushing it, and we weren’t knackered. It was 10pm.
We decided it was too cruel to share our feet with anyone and headed to Lan Kwai Fong where Lesley, Andrea and Colleen were waiting.
At 12.45 I needed food. Quite badly. Kebab time!
At 1.30, I showered and went to bed.
At 1.35 I was asleep.
I learned today (thank you Dr Google!) that the animal we saw in the tree was a Masked Palm Civet. It gives off a Skunky smell when scared. Maybe there are more of them than we knew running about?
Final thoughts: will do this again. It was as great as I thought it would be. Don’t know why night hikes appeal to me so much. But they do. So grateful we can do this. There's not a lot of places in the world where you can.
It was amazing. LOVE 41
Ohhhh my Tessie!! Ai ya. Good for you and as usual you quite amaze me : )
Much love, M xox
Posted by: Maureen Lyons aka Mo aka grandmother aka Mum | April 16, 2011 at 11:34 AM
Happy Birthday Tess!
A fantastic birthday for a fantastic woman!
Posted by: rani | April 16, 2011 at 05:13 PM
Happy Birthday Tess! Haha. I am one of the HK girls who don't really get a night hike (first thing that popped in my head is - what about all the mosquitoes?) but can totally see why that would be the perfect thing for you to celebrate your birthday. And Terri is AMAZING! She has been working so hard right up till Friday afternoon! And a night hike and Philippines this morning? Wow!
Posted by: Sonia | April 16, 2011 at 05:34 PM
Wonderful! What a great way to celebrate your birthday. One of my all time favourite memories is of climbing Mt. Fuji at night.
Posted by: edebock | April 17, 2011 at 12:30 AM
Next time you want to go on a virtual night hike you can march around the outskirts of Yellowknife in the middle of December and not:
1)Get hot
2) Meet any stinky animals
3)See spiders and snakes which are frozen and not visable under all the snow
Mom and I will let you and your friends sleep in the living room.
Love to all....Dad
Posted by: GDadLyons | April 17, 2011 at 05:08 AM
Hey Tess, I was quite interested in your post when I saw it on FB. Very cool. I would have done it with you in celebration of both our March birthdays! I turned 50 this year, where is the time going? I totally would have liked a night hike, just a tad bit out of the ordinary, perfect. Miss you.
Posted by: Jeanne Yasso | April 17, 2011 at 06:20 AM
A group of us used to meet every Wednesday night at Parkview to do violet hill and the twins, it was great fun, an excellent work out, and especially good in the summer when day hiking got too hot.
Need to resurrect that - but things hard with the kids and move separation anxiety at the moment!
Posted by: gweiposter | April 17, 2011 at 06:45 PM