Bukit Timah Hill [Singapore 2018]

In this expedition report, we ascend to Singapore’s highest point, no support team, intermediate camps, or supplemental oxygen required. That’s because Singapore’s highest point, Bukit Timah Hill, is 163.63 meters above ground level. That’s one hundred and sixty; not one thousand, six hundred; or sixteen thousand. So it’s about one and a half soccer fields high. The world record for sprinting 200 meters is 19.19 seconds. At least its steepness spares it from being climbed in less time than it takes to air a Super Bowl ad.

We trekked walked to base camp the visitor’s center from Beauty World to begin our journey. The path is paved, but the initial rise is steep enough that I wouldn’t recommend strollers, wheelchairs, or roller skates. There are some unpaved, less straightforward trails around the nature reserve, but we didn’t take any of them this time. After the main trail levels out, it’s a quick and easy walk to the summit flag summit rock at the top of Bukit Timah Hill. Following the mandatory pictures commemorating our conquest, we clipped back into the fixed ropes walked back down the hill.

Summit rock

Taking our time and with a slight detour, it took us an hour to get up and down Bukit Timah Hill. It wasn’t crowded, but there were a decent number of people also walking around; we probably saw two or three dozen people in total. (You haven’t seen crowded if you haven’t hiked something like the gorge trails at Taughannock or Watkin’s Glen on a weekend in summer. Bumper to bumper traffic the whole way through, and you’d better hope you don’t get stuck behind the extended family with a double stroller who walks at their three-year-old’s pace straight down the middle of the trail or the guy who’s taking advantage of the sights, smells, and sounds of nature by smoking while on a phone call.)

Back at ground level, we next walked to a nearby quarry where we saw the quarry, plus a small horde of monkeys. We still had some time before our dinner engagement, so we walked another couple miles down an old railway turned walking path. It was fabulously wet and muddy. It was sufficiently nature-y, though it paralleled the road so we never got away from the traffic sounds, which is my number one complaint/gripe/disappointment about Ann Arbor. In Ann Arbor, it’s really hard to get somewhere where you can’t hear/see traffic, train horns, the helicopter taking off from the hospital, or buildings if you don’t have a car. I’m pretty sure the four-lane road between North and Central Campus has more traffic than the two-lane highway leading out of Ithaca. The highways encircling the city also make it difficult to access certain portions of Ann Arbor as a pedestrian/biker. I have a whole Ann Arbor rant, but for now, I was halfway around the world surrounded by 5.6 million of my closest friends.

The quarry