The New Year holiday stops here ... at least for the hikers.

The 3rd day of New Year is "Red Mouth" - Day of Quarrel. It says if you visit your friends today, you will end up arguing with them. I am sure there is a story behind but I don't remember anyone reading it to me before I go to sleep. I bet it's about a lady putting on red lipstick before going to a debate ... ok, ok, just kidding. 

Hong Kong's mountains are not particularly high in comparison to mountains in other parts of the world. Highest point  is, as far as I can remember, a little short of 3,000 ft. Sort of like a goose bump on the skin of planet Earth.

• The hike plan goes: start 0930, end 1630
• Weather condition: drizzle, gusty (estimate 25mph), 50F (wind chill factor not included)

That's how it looks in the morning. Kam is the one ... behind the camera.

 top

Here is a quote from fellow hiker Willie's web page:

"We walked, climbed or crawled (whichever you want to describe) roughly 21km (just 13 miles but it was a very rough hike) in a total of 10 hours; during the course of the hike, my G-Shock shocked us by recording sub 11 degrees Celsius temperature (12F!?. It felt like so in the wind but it's definitely not true. I will give Willie a new watch in his coming up birthday), not to mention the gusting wind and the wind chill.  Climbed ~250 meters (825 ft.) along the side of a ~60 degrees slope with basically limited traction (we got lost and had to climb up a near-cliff to get back to the trial).

Kam (yes, that's me, always the kamikaze of the team), Alan and Dr6 made their extra effort on reaching the sharpest peak in Hong Kong in just 20 minutes (with crampy legs)! Beautiful landscape and waters!"
 
By the way, the peak we climb is called "Southern Snake Tip". It's our way of telling the Year of the Snake to behave and treat us well.
  

The Sun comes out after lunch. Kam is the big orange at top left. The peak at left is the goose bump we are going to climb.

At 1930, yes 1930, 3 hours behind schedule, we reached a destination cramp site (it's not a typo, I mean c-r-a-m-p site) and start yelling in pain. Good thing is we haven't "red-mouthed". Bad thing we won't have the energy to "red-mouth" in at least 3 days.