Nagari Hill Climb, June 28-29, 2008

Monday 3 am - just back from the Nagari Hills climb - wow! The past 47 hours (since Sat 4am) have been amazing - one of the thoughest treks/climbs since Tata Mountains/2. All 4 previous treks do not come close to this, neither in distance, climb, nor terrain.

25 km trek/1033m climb to the highest peak in the Nagari hills. After our first failed attempt 2 weeks back, this time we completed our mission successfully. CTC does not give up that easily...



The climb was steep, the trail rocky but the views from the peak were worth it, looking down on both sides - one side the beautiful Nagari valley and lake and the Southern Nagari mountains on the other side. The climb was mentally though as on many occasions we ran short of water. Luckely we found a few places along the path where we could refill our bottles in order to proceed further.


22 brave CTC members got up at 4am, assembled in 3 cars and 2 bikes along the city, reached Vallaramalai where we parked the cars around 10:30am, this time we did not enter the valley from the Northern lake side but from the Western side - a 6 km walk through the hills took us to the temple around 2pm. Everyone jumped in the water pool beneath the 50 feet waterfall followed by lunch. From there we proceeded, as usual, on top of the waterfall along a steep mountain river, partly water, partly dry until we reached our previous night camp around 4:30pm at 450m altitude.


From here we proceeded along a small trail further up (South) for 1-2 hours until we reached a flat area suitable to set up a camp at 750m. We quickly made a cooking fire and set up our plastic sheets functioning as tents. Dinner was hardly completed and the weather gods turned against us with heavy rains throughout the evening and night. A fresh, sunny morning the next day. At 7am around 16 members decided to push ahead and make an attempt for the peak. We continued along the small rocky trail up along the edge of the mountain until we reached a bigger campsite with hut near a river with water. We refilled ou bottles and proceeded along the river South East towards the highest peak in the Nagari hills.


After 4 hours climbing, at 11am we successfully reached the peak at 1033m the highest in the surrounding mountain ranges. We tooked in the breathtaking views, the cool mountain wind blowing through our hair, mouth all dry and thursty (lack of water) but with a profound feeling of accomplishment. Photo time! After this we proceeded with our descent which would took us back to our cars only by 9pm after walking 2 hours in the dark, enjoying a cool dip in the water pool near the temple, the entire group getting lost on a wrong trail, and carefully navigating back in the dark along the proper trail using our trustworthy friend - the Vista HcX. Dinner followed at Puthur.



Wow! This was a pretty though one - distance, climb, terrain. At least the climate was on our side (unlike Tada Mountains). This was a real trek in its true sense - navigating by ourselves in mountaineous/forest unknown terrain. The presence of water streams was key to a successfull mission. Even with 4 bottles per head we needed several refills during the two days to make it to and fro. Gotta go now and take some sleep - 5 hours before the start of an exciting week in the office.




Countdown has started for the next weekend... Need to take a closer look tomorrow at our US army topomap of the Eastern Ghats to identify the next, probably similar, destination - proper terrain for trekking. Will send out an invitation on Tuesday. Stay tuned for the photos!

Goodnight fellow trekkers and sweet dreams Nagari climbers!
Peter

Photo archive:

Best Photos
Amal
Vinod
Simon
Ab

Participants: Amal, Peter, Divya, ram prasad, Gokul, Chenchu, Ebenezer, Samyak, Gopikrishna, Kirthi, Krishnamurthi, Aruna, VenkataKrishnan, Karthik, Thomas, Sai Krishnan, Gokul, Pramodkumar, Chezian, Balamurugan, Vinod, Ramesh.

















GPS Log
Trail in Google Earth