MM AUG 17: Night Hike @ Kota Damansara Community Forest

Monday, 14-8-2017

By: Tan Zhi Ying

It has been quite a while since Raleigh Kuala Lumpur organized a night hike and we are all very excited about it! On the 12th of August 2017, we had 42 adventurous participants that joined us for our night hike event at Kota Damansara Community Forest (KDCF).

Participants gathering at MRT station.

Surrounded on all sides by highways and housing, the Kota Damansara Community Forest exists today as an island of green amidst the urban sprawl. This remnant lowland mixed dipterocarp rainforest of just over 320 hectares is today, a mere fraction of the once extensive Sungai Buloh Forest Reserve (6,590 ha). Thankful for the group of diverse communities that came together in defence of the Kota Damansara forest and also volunteered their time, energy and money to ensure that the forest would not be removed. The Kota Damansara Community Forest Reserve was officially gazetted on 18 February 2010.

Upon reaching KDCF, our organizer, Geng Qian, gave a welcoming speech and a short briefing on the background of Raleigh International and Raleigh Kuala Lumpur. A safety briefing was also given later on before we started the hike. We were glad to have Justine, the president of KDCF Society to join us for the night hike too. Justine had provided us some interesting history and facts of this community forest and it was really amazing to see how much they had done to protect this forest reserve.

Luke from Sabah sharing his experience as a Project Manager for an expedition.

Thereafter, we had the ice breaking game. After a round of warm up, everyone was pretty much ready for the night hike! Participants were split up into three teams: Alpha, Bravo and Charlie. Team Alpha took on the lead and started the trek followed by team Bravo and team Charlie after with 10 minutes interval each.  We had a mini treasure hunt game for the participants where each team has to look out and collect five bags of watermelon skin along the trails.

Energizer time!

The hike took us approximately two hours including breaks in between for snacks and water. Right after we completed the hike, each team calculated the amount of bags they had collected and team Charlie was the winner of the night woohoo! We ended the night eating watermelons prepared by the lovely organizing committee.

Thank you to all participants and Justine for taking your time out to join our activity .We, from Raleigh Kuala Lumpur hope that everyone had a great time and we hope to see you again in our next monthly meet.

If you are planning your next hiking trip to KDCF or you wish to help out in any event/activity by KDCF, you may check out their website or Facebook page.