“ The density of the jungle however, obscured the view and each successive peak
of the ridge led us on, will-o’-wisp fashion, to another, which was always just a little
higher.”
-W.W. Skeat, describing his unsuccessful attempt on Gunung Tahan in 1899
Much folklore surrounded Gunung Tahan. Gunung Tahan means literally ‘forbidden mountain’. The summit is supposed to be guarded by a giant monkey-as big as a rhinoceros, which is watching over two pots. The pots contain the ibu emas and ibu perak-magic stones, capable of changing anything they into gold and silver respectively.
The first know expeditions to Gunung Tahan were dispatched by Bendahara (Chief Minister) Ahmad, who had become sultan of Pahang in 1863 after a six year civil war.
The aims of the two expeditions are not recorded. But it is very likely that Bnedahara Ahamd was looking for gold. Pahang had a significant output of gold-its quality was known as far as Australia. The state had been impoverished by the civil war and the chief Minister badly needed money. According to traditional legends about Gunung Tahan, the mountain’s rivers would have been a good place to search.
The most remote and northerly settlements in Pahang were located along the banks of the upper Tembeling River. One of these settlements was Kuala Tahan (the present day Headquarters of Taman Negara.
Kuala Tahan was located at the confluence of the Tembeling and The Tahan. Some kilometers upstream, the Tahan forked. Both forks ran into deep valleys-The Teku and Tahan valleys. Between the valleys was a steep broken ridge, which reached up to a high mountain plateau. Somewhere beyond the plateau, lay Gunung Tahan
Ignorant of the local geography, the Chief Minister’s expeditions approached the mountain by what seemed to be the most obvious route-up the Teku valley, from where Gunung Tahan can appear to be tantalizingly close. Unfortunately, the Teku Valley is a trap. It is a canyon with almost vertical sides, upwards for around 1000m on both sides. If you proceed up this canyon along the Teku river, your way is finally barred by a series of spectacular waterfalls that tumble down through 600m in what is know today as the Teku Gorge. Any attempt to the canyon’s walls is usually defeated by the extremely precipitous and broken ground.
The Teku Valley defeated both of Bendahara Ahmad’s expeditions, as it was to defeat some of the later European attempts on Gunung Tahan.
The outside world first became aware of Gunung Tahan from a Russian explorer, Baron von Mikluho-Maclay, who in 1875 landed at Pekan, the royal capital of Pahang. He was the first European to penetrate the interior of Pahang. He traveled up the Pahang and Tembeling rivers and then over the border into Kelantan. In his notebook, the Baron recorded:
“Near the sixth rapid, at the kampung of Penghulu Gendong, I noticed at some distance a remarkable mountain which was pointed out to me as Gunung Tahan. I believe that from here the mountain could be reached in two or three days”.
Soon the story a high mountain in the middle of the country had become widespread. Everybody started looking. In 1883, a surveyor working on the Thai border reported seeing a great mountain in a southeast direction, about 100km away, which the Resident of Perak recorded as agreeing ‘…with a story of a 13000ft mountain in Pahang’.
In the same year, another observer near Taiping, reported seeing a mountain through a powerful telescope, ‘…60 miles away… on a bearing of 102’…11000ft high…an uneven top with steep sides…in the same direction as Gunung Tahan’.
As Gunung Tahan lay in an unmapped and unexplored region in the interior of the Peninsula, such sightings could not be confirmed. If anything, they merely fuelled speculation about the mountain and embellished the existing legends. The height was generally thought to lie between 3000m (10000ft) and 4300m (14000ft), though imagination seems occasionally to have carried the height up to 6000m (20000ft). The significance of the more extreme claims appears to have escaped contemporary observers: the permanent snow line at this latitude is around 4900m, so a height 6000m would have meant a snow peak and glaciers.
By 1888 Pahang had come under British control. the first European-organised expeditions were now mounted to climb Gunung Tahan. H.N.Ridley made the first serious attempt in 1890, He was an incompetent leader. His party got only a few km upstream from Kuala Tahan not even reaching the base of the mountains.
Ignorance and bad leadership doomed all the early European attempts on Gunung Tahan. Nothing illustrates this better than the Becher incident. In 1893, Becher traveled up the Tahan River towards Gunung Tahan on a prospecting expedition. Against the advise of his Malay helpers, Becher insisted on camping on a small island in the middle of the river instead of on the river bank. It was an incredibly stupid thing to do. It was in September (normally one of the wettest months) and it had rained heavily upstream. After dinner, the party noticed that the river was rising rapidly. Becher and his helpers hastily jumped into a boat and cast off- abandoning the other European clinging to some bushes as the island submerged. The latter was subsequently rescued by the Malays in another boat. Meanwhile, Becher stood up in his boat and tried to guide it through the floodwaters with a long pole. He refused to sit down and allow the far more experienced Malays to guide the boat. As a result, the boat capsized and Becher was never seen again.
The only expedition over this period which came close to success, was one led by Skeat in 1899.
Skeat was leading a Cambridge University expedition to the east coast states of the Peninsula, when his travels in Kelantan brought him to the foothills of Gunung Tahan. Then, as another member of the expedition later wrote, he “impulsively decided to make a dash for the mountain”. It was a decision made almost on the spur of the moment.
Taking only a small group of local helpers with him, and traveling lightly (by the
Standards of the day) and quickly, Skeat actually got part of the way up the main access ridge-which is the correct route.
Unfortunately, he had initially moved up the Teku Valley-Realizing his mistake, he then cut his way up the side of the valley onto the ridge separating the Teku and Tahan valleys. But the damage had been done. By the time the party reached the ridge top, they were exhausted and had run out of food.
As one contemporary later wrote, Skeat’s attempt was within “an ace of success”. The correct route was now apparent: go straight up the ridge separating the two valleys.
The 1905 Expedition
H.C.Robinson was Curator of the Selangor State Museum. He had wanted to climb Gunung Tahan for many years, but only in 1905 did the necessary fund become available. The British Museum offered to pay half the costs provided that the entire botanical and zoological collection was sent to London. The Federal Government of Malaya would pay the other half.
Leonard Wray, Director of Museums of the Federated Malay States, joined Robinson.
The expedition made good use of the experience gained from earlier unsuccessful attempts on Gunung Tahan. Kuala Teku, the junction of the Teku and Tahan rivers, was chosen as the base for the climb. In many wars, it was an ideal spot. It can be reached by boat fro Kuala Tahan though the boats must be hauled over rapids. It is the base of the ridge that leads up to the mountain plateau. Present day trekkers usually camp at Kuala Teku, on route to and from Gunung Tahan: it is a scenic site with a wide river bank, where you can fish and swim safely. The summit of Gunung Tahan can be reached today from Kuala Teku in under 36 hours-though of course this was not known in 1905.
An advance party was sent upriver in April, under the command of Dato To Muntri Idin from Kuala Tembeling, to construct a base camp at Kuala Teku. This party also built two camps along the route up the ridge. They found a flag left by Skeat six years earlier, which marked the furthest point reached in 1899. Two of the men managed to advance along the ridge to a point where “there remained only two hills between them and a spur of the Tahan itself” wrote Robison, referring to a shoulder of Gunung Gedong, which makes the edge of the high mountain plateau.
The Dato’ reported back to Wary and Robison, the difficulties of making progress along the ridge. The ridge was (and still is) very broken, sometimes only a few meters wide, with sudden vertical drops of tens of meter: it is no place for the nervous. Dato’ To, who was not used to such precipitous terrain, said the ridge made him giddy and that some of his men were too frightened to continue.
The ridge consists of a long series of little peaks. The whole ridgeline is wrapped in short but very dense, tangled vegetation as is common on exposed ground open to the sun and rain. As Skeat noted in his published account, whenever you hack and cut your way up one little peak, another similar peak comes into view. Each peak seems a little higher than the previous one. The process seems to have no end: it is frustrating and eventually demoralizing when you don’t know where it is leading-maybe dead end-and what progress, if any, is being made.
Most expeditions to Gunung Tahan in those days started from Kuala Lipis, the administrative capital of Pahang. The Robinson expedition set off by boat on the morning of 17 May 1905, reaching Kuala Tembeling by late evening the same day. The porters and local guide were collected and the whole party set off the next day for Kuala Tahan. Today, this journey takes 3-4 hours, depending on the state of the river. In 1905, without diesel engines, it took two whole days.
At Kuala Tahan, the party set off up the Tahan River in fourteen dugout canoes. It took four days to reach the base camp at Kuala Teku. Several bad rapids were encountered. At these, the boats had to be unloaded and the supplies carried over the rocks or through the jungle on the riverbanks. The boats themselves had then to be hauled over the rocks with ropes. One boat sank, and that was the one carrying all the tea, tobacco, salted fish and matches: much of this got soaked and had to dried out over fires-not an easy job in humid jungle.
At Kuala Teku, the whole party numbered 65 people. For the attempt on Gunung Tahan, they had fifty bags of rice each 25kg, as the basic food, supplemented by the salted fish, a few tins and some fowl (which soon died of some mysterious disease).
Four days were spent at Kuala Teku, drying out the wet supplies, and making baskets from jungle rotan and wide palm leaves for carrying the stores. Supplies were sent ahead to the next camp at 900m on the ridge-to be known later as Wray’s Camp.
On 28 May 1905, the rest of the party set off for Wray’s Camp. Weather condition was bad: there was heavy rain on the trail. That night the poorly constructed hut at Wray’s Camp was buffeted by wind and torrential rain. The next morning, it was found that 13 porters had deserted. Forty-eight hours later, nearly all the rest of the porters insisted on leaving. The party was reduced to thirteen.
The next week was spent making progress along the ridge. One little peak on the ridge was named “Observation Hill” because of the good view it gave along the trail to the edge of the mountain plateau ahead. From Observations Hill, there appeared to be only two small hills to overcome before reaching the base of the plateau: these are the two little peaks known as Gunung Tangga Lima Belas and Gunung Reskit today.
However, past Observations Hill, the ridge become more broken and precipitous requiring ladders to climb up the side of ravines that frequently intersected the route.
On 7 June, two of the Malay guides come down, back along the ridge and reported that they had climbed up the ‘tall white cliff’ on the side of the high mountain plateau. They had planted a flag on top-on the shoulder of Gunung Gedong. Robinson was just able to see the flag through a telescope-from a distance of 3 km. The way had now been found through to the mountain plateau.
There was now a delay in the advance as supplies had to be brought up from below and huts constructed at a new site at the top end of the ridge. From Robinson’s account, this appears to have been on the Gunung Reskit campsite. The huts were certainly needed: anybody camping along this ridge today is well aware of how uncomfortable a night can be on this exposed knife-edge intermittently immersed in mist, swept by cold rain and wind, and where there is no shelter. It was much tougher in 1905: there was no polythene sheeting, no nylon waterproofs.
Over this period some new porters arrived. But Wray and one of the porters become sick and had to be evacuated. This left Robinson and twelve other on the mountain. He noted that this included six Pahang Malays, “all more or less picked men”.
The next two weeks were spent in collecting specimens, surveying the Tahan Valley and finding the easiest route to the summit.
The first people to reach the summit were four of Robinson’s Malay helpers’ on 16 July 1905. Robinson does not record their names in his published account. However Scrivenor, who climbed Gunung Tahan in 1906, recorded that Che Nik, Mu min, Mat Aris and Bulang were the first people to climb Peninsular Malaysia’s highest mountain. We know little about these men. Scrivenor employed Bulang as a guide for his Gunung Tahan expedition, and described him as a “short cheerful little fellow who always looked on the bright side of things”. This would fit in very well with his being one of Robinson’s “more or less picked men” who had remained with him after the other had lost heart. It is also very likely that these four men had led the way right up the ridge from Kuala Teku to the summit. Within a year of the first successful ascent of Gunung Tahan, there were two other expeditions to Gunung Tahan. Now that the route was known, the situation was very different: “in 1906, thinks to the timing of the attempt, the lightness of the baggage, the willingness of the Malays with me, and the well-worn paths, the ladders and huts of the 1905expedition…the ascent of Gunung Tahan was made without any serious difficulty… The ascent was, in fact”, wrote Scrivenor in 1912.
In 1906, the Survey Department carried up the steel plates and angle iron to construct the survey beacon found on the summit today. The height was then fixed at 7050ft. For a time, Gunung Korbu in the Main Range was believed to be slightly higher. However, 1912 the height of Gunung Tahan was as remeasured at 7186ft confirming it was the highest mountain in the Peninsula. The present official height is 2187m (7174ft).
There is no pot of gold on Gunung Tahan, no treasured of any kind. But you can pick up attractive quartz crystals, which are scattered widely over the summit slopes, glinting in the sunlight. In early days, the local porters and guide used to collect them – they called them intan (Malay for diamond). Perhaps these (unfortunately worthless) crystals are the real source of the legends about Gunung Tahan.
1905 was a significant year. Not only was Gunung Tahan conquered, but a survey expedition also climbed Gunung Gerah (2103m), a big peak in the northern part of the Main Range. Shortly afterwards, Gunung Noring (1889m), the last big peak at the top end of the Main Range, was climbed. The mountain blanks were essentially filled in.
(Original source of info.: unidentified, email from Chai Kam Meng)
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