Introduction to the people you can see in the most challenging routes on the web. I think it will give you a better understanding of route difficulty levels.

Quite some time ago, jokingly, I started using the term “the A-Team” for a few people with whom I was doing the more demanding routes. The name comes from a very old TV series.

An odd group of ex-soldiers, each one with his own specialty: the tactician, the pilot, the muscle, and the con artist. In our case we have.

Colin – the Climber

He has been climbing and coasteering all over Hong Kong for the last two decades. Able to set a secure anchor in no time in almost any place and casually climb a 10 meters cliff with no protection. My friends compare him with different animals. A goat, as he is able to fast walk from rock to rock finding the optimal route almost instinctively while coasteering; and a gecko for his effortless climbing 😄 His routines explained in this WSJ article a decade ago, if you want to know more about the pioneer.

Tyler – the Swimmer

Former elite swimmer, training with USA Olympians. To give you a reference, his personal records are faster than female world records. For example, 100m long course at 51 seconds. Quite experienced nowadays also in open water. A fish for us, mere mortals 😉 Additionally he is our most experienced kayaker. Having kayaked all around Hong Kong for the last years. Bonus points for being completely fluent in Cantonese and starting to be pretty knowledgeable of the local geology, fauna, and flora.

Iurgi – the Runner

Although I would be better described as “Anything long distance-er”. Nothing extreme compared with ultra runners, ultra swimmers, and others, but “nicely combined”. To give you some references: through-hiking 10 days for three hundred kilometers and I don’t remember how much vertical elevation, open water swimming up to 15km non stop, trail running up to 50km in one go. Stream hiking and coasteering became just the natural evolution after being exploring all HK running and swimming for years.

Paul – the Mountaineer

Seven Summits, checked. Tons of other summits, even a first-ever ascent, checked. Coasteering loop to all Hong Kong Island in one go, checked. Mountain biking all around, checked. Speleology, even with ropes in HK, checked. The most multifaceted of us four.

All of us could be considered extremely experienced in outdoor adventures. But as you can see, our skills are quite diverse. Combine them nicely and you can have max fun. Do not realize each individual’s limitations and you can screw it badly.

Failures

Starting from the most recent that ended with me in the hospital. I’m not good with ropes. Part of my lower mark in climbing. I have done basic courses for sport climbing, canyoning guide, rescue… But my brain doesn’t process ropes and knots fast. So I either used to go canyoning and climbing with well-experienced friends or I needed to check everything relaxed and very carefully. Last summer I decided that I needed to practice more. After several outings with Colin & Roland, last August I went with Tyler to climb and abseil waterfalls going up Tung Lung and down Hidden Dragon. On the downstream, we started to be in a rush and I wanted just to hike the regular path. Tyler convinced me that setting up the ropes (60m x2) and abseiling the last double waterfall was going to be faster than the tricky path next to them. Set everything up, start the abseil, get to the mid-way platform, turn for the second section and a few meters in I realized that the ropes had tons of twists and knots… I should have changed gear (ascenders), climb up to the “platform”, untie everything from there and abseil again. But I was worried about being late and having Tyler above without knowing why it was taking me so long. So I released the descender kinda blocked with the first knot, I relied on the VT prusik I had above and I tried to fix the mess enough to reach the bottom, without realizing that I had some rope tangled above already. As soon as I moved a bit hard it untangled, slack, the prusik did not hold and I fell approx 4 meters… Extreme sharp pain in my left foot. Blow the whistle to tell Tyler to come down.

Yup, that’s the waterfall in that exact moment. I took the pic of him descending while I was checking my foot 😅 Let him know mid-way, again with the whistle, of the rope mess. He fixed from the platform and once he was down safely.

‐ I have broken my heel
‐ Your shoe heel?
‐ Nope. My foot. I will try the auto-rescue. I think I can hop one-legged in the dry parts and scoot out in the water sections. Can you pick up all our gear?

Painful but careful enough to avoid creating further damage (I have never been happier of my cross training, one-legged squats and others included), we were able to go down really slow till the road where the ambulance could pick me up.

Too many wrong things done, but the main one was not following my initial thinking. Not an easy waterfall (with that turn in the middle) to descend for my level, being the first one inspecting all conditions on the way + being in a rush… Bad, bad.

Semi failures

When Tyler proposed to go to Kat O and coasteer and swim till Devil’s Fist the plan sounded fun for me. Shorter than other outings I had done on my own in the area.

I knew that Colin had swum long-distance open water before checking islands, but I had never had done so with him. The Kat O exploration was fun, but just a few minutes after starting the swim we realized that there was no way for us to do the full route. We all were wearing fins (+ paddles in my case) to try to speed up the islands crossings. But after some minutes of freestyle swimming, Colin got tired, turned, and started kicking on his back. A lot more comfortable for everyone with no long swim training. But slow. Tyler pulled both his and Colin’s bags and even that way he had time to get to dry land and record us with the drone.

Colin showed us later his coasteering speed in the relatively flat coastline of Crescent Island. Really fast. Too much for Tyler, who was struggling to keep up the pace. In my case, I was in between the two taking pics and jogging to catch Colin and wait for Tyler. Luckily we did not get into trouble thanks to his Cantonese. Reach an area with phone signal, contact the speed boat and let him know our final pick-up location. Far from the original plan Tyler had shared with him.

In Tung Ma To I was the one who did not factor correctly conditions and fitness levels. I brought Tyler and a couple of HKOutsiders to the stream. But conditions were far from perfect. Little flow, hot and polluted day. The upstream, abseiling fun included, was mainly uneventful (snake encounter and thorns aside).

Once out of the watercourse I needed to decide the best exit. I knew the steep up and down route through the Hunchbacks that I had hiked and run before. On the map I could see another path that looked flatter and I decided to explore it. But finally, it was more tiring for the rest with continuous ups and downs. I almost did not realize till Tyler & Roland ran out of water and started to show mild heatstroke symptoms… Ouch… Luckily I knew how to get fast to a stream (Ma Sai) in the area. Run there, gather and filter tons of water and bring it all for both of them. Drink, throw water over head, some time under the shade, and good to continue on the way down to Sai Kung.

Successes

Most of our outings have been so, but some would be impossible without the right combination. One of the clearest: Wang Chau the way we did it.

I would not even think about swimming 2 kilometers dragging the backpack and through a channel with such heavy boat traffic. But with Tyler the plan was perfectly safe. We visited all the interesting parts calmly, I got superb training following “the fish” and we returned fast to avoid having any problem picking up a taxi back to Sai Kung.

This is not the only option. We could do it in Colin’s way.

This would be the preferred plan if I were with him and Paul. Tyler might have had problems though with the distance and similar to Po Toi need to swim shortcut a bit.

The moral. Outing difficulty is always subjective. Subject, among others, to each person’s skills. Be aware of yours and those in your group and choose routes wisely.

P.S. The marks above are just an easy (computer game-like) simplification to make the post more understandable. Nothing too serious. And no, you all that come with me regularly, I will not provide you your skill marks, nor consider “upgrading” you to the A-Team 😄