New Year-Old hike

I am not sure how often you need to repeat something for it to become a tradition; however we repeated our Plover Cove hike again this New year(2nd year in a row). Why Plover Cove hike-quite challenging, old school(rugged)17.5km hike which is quite scenic and confers immediate boasting rights!

This attempt we were definitely better equipped in supplies and morale. We started from home on time with a good breakfast. Also the Mister found me a zero-tech sturdy stick to negotiate the slippery slopes, since last time I took a nasty tumble on this hike.

Our hike coincided with the New Year N.E. Mountain Race 2017, so we had lots of determined soul with bruised legs from company(this hike really gets you if you are not careful with the loose stones, root or rocky outgrowth). They were tackling the hike from the opposite direction hence it was easy to read the struggle etched in the red faces, deep breaths and shaky legs.
Since the trail is really tricky and quite narrow at places, we were slowed down by the traffic coming from the opposite direction. This time the initial gruelling 6.5 km took us longer and naturally a heartfelt curse escapes your lips when the distance post reads 11 km remaining..(just as last time).

The last 5.5 km is a gentle walk across the reservoir, so effectively the 11km heartbreak point is not truly a moment of crisis, nevertheless we steadied our pace after this milestone. We were steadily covering ground(as the runners had also mostly thinned out), when we were stopped in our tracks by the angry growl of potentially a wild boar. We didn't see the animal but were scared enough by the growls to retrace our steps and wait for fellow hikers to catch up with us before proceeding further. Meanwhile the animal had also returned to the safety of the deep woods.
The remaining hike was smooth and it was almost sunset when we reached the bus stop. It was also time for the whole bunch of picnicking-BBQing crowd in the vicinity of the reservoir to head back home. It was a long wait at the bus stop and a long snaky route through Tai-Po before we finally reached the MTR station.
We were back home exactly 12 hrs after we embarked on our journey on the first day of 2017.. So yeah Happy New Year!!!

Old blog post from 2016 can be found here:Plover cove 2016