Potential Dangers in Bukit Tabur

Would like to highlight some of our observations to fellow trekkers.

Location : at the First Rope of Bukit Tabur

1) Potential Danger No 1 : At the spot of the sand patch

There is a patch of sandy ground, mostly of loose sand at the edge of the rock, probably caused by erosion.



A trekker passed by to get down, stepping on the loose sand patch



The approximate size of the sand patch is 3 to 4 shoes put together side by side, if you stand here with both feet on the sand patch, once your body is off balance, it will be a fall of 100 to 150 meters down vertical drop/cliff.



Click on the picture for clearer view of the loose sand patch

2) Potential danger No 2 : The rope swing out while descending/ascending

Please take note of the boy in blue shirt, when he first started his descend, the rope is near to the left side of the rock.

As he came down, he must have lost his balance and swing to the right side of the rock.

The boy didn't find a footing to letch on his feet, he was hanging there holding the rope without support.

The picture was captured in a split of a second which I didn't prepared for, and thus the blurry image.

When the rope swings out, hang on to your dear life and try to manouver yourself towards the left side of the rock

Our rock climber Lau assisted him by giving the boy the red rope which he was working on to enhance the function of the existing rope.


and Peter helped him down further as he slowly get down here.


Having been involved in the rescue operation has left an impact in our life, personally I have heart can sometimes miss many beats, when I see trekkers coming down playfully, carelessly, gung-ho--ly ( if there is such a word for this ), too much of seeing this, I may get heart attack and die there.


Heard from fellow trekkers, there was an accident, the boy was holding the rope with one hand, and put up a peace sign on another for his friend to take picture.


and pooops, he fell down the cliff.( I have yet to confirm this )

3) Potential danger No 3 : carelessness

This is a set of pictures showing a playful teenager.


The teenager was swinging his body like a pendulum of a clock supporting his one hand on the rock & the other hand on the tree trunk.




Never, never, never ATTEMPT to do like what he did in this picture.

Life is precious than a few minutes of so call " fun ", be it to show off, be it to........ derive a kick or whatever....,whatever your idea of fun is,

Whoever, Whatever, anything you think goes.

Once accident happens, you kena !!!

We strongly advise any trekkers to observe common sense N safety measures to prevent untowards accident from happening.

It is perfectly alright to have fun in trekking, but it must be done with due concern to safety.

It's fine to get excitement on challenges

Quoting an opinion from an adventure guide, Taiping Goh
" The power of Mother Nature can never be under estimated. We as trekkers never CONQUERED any mountain. U could disagree me with this statement. My mentor Botak Chin only taught me 2 main things: (1) prepare for the worst, hope for the best (2)safety is the top priority."

and Quote fr Fongkahchun as below

fongkahchun86 wrote on Jun 3, '08 I guess everything boils down to individual trekking discipline. Be it the organiser and the trekkers themselves. As an organiser, we cannot always take things for granted. Even though some of us never has any incident or major accidents, safety can never be overlook. As a participating trekkers, it's also our discipline to be well-prepared and not to be stubborn especially to advises of someone who is very experience. 忠言逆耳，meaning good advises are usually unpleasant to the ears and hard to accept. So no matter how lazy we may be, how confident we are, there are always times for us to be well-behave so as not to spoil everyone's mood for the trek. Happy trekking!

Happy happy ya..................