3 hours ago, we finished Bronze AYP Final! Guan Yiu, Alex Yau and I just finished leading/helping this year's Bronze AYP Group 6 through the walk.
First of all, it was quite amazing. It was fairly short a walk, but the weather made a big difference. The temperature for the first day was hotter than expected, being rather sunny and windy up at Ngam She Tsim but stuffy. At the base of Sharp Peak, it was so windy that some had trouble standing up straight. My hat was almost blown off.
On the first day, we were helping out Ms Stringer with Group 10 - a small group consisting of 2 boys and 2 girls. My first impression was that they were rather separate and quiet, but it turned out that a pair of them were very romantic, strolling down the beach to Ham Tin while holding hands. They were quite a coherent group, able to make decisions on navigation problems quite quickly. We decided to teach them back-bearings and some other techniques, and they were able to use them to plot their location fairly accurately, even though the wind was extremely strong. To give you an idea of its strength, imagine yourself being pushed by someone. To sum up the situation, someone commented that the wind was so strong it was affecting the needle of their compass.
Their route was average in difficulty. There was some bushwhacking (where you have to push nasty, springy bushes away) and some bushwalking (just walk through the vegetation) before lunch. But there were also some rather crazy routes that they decided to take in order to avoid going anywhere near Sharp Peak. So instead of going down the ridge down to the beach, they decided to take a treacherous route that contoured the very steep ridge. Indeed, the path was so thin that I was certain it was made by cows that, like Group 10, were afraid of Sharp Peak and its spectacular ridges.
The descent to sea level was very extraordinary. Imagine 8 people sliding on their bottoms down a SMOOTH dusty slope. The dust cloud that occurred was so bad everyone was almost blind after that. Alex made an effort to "surf" down the last part, but still landed on his bum.
We had to do similar descents down 6 more of these before we got a proper path.
On Day 2, we were attached to Group 6, a group of sporty year 10 boys. They were not very cooperative and there were several times in which we almost went down the wrong route. Luckily, we didn't have to do any bushwhacking with them, because I was certain they were going to turn a bushwhack into an 3-day camp. Mr Sheriff was one of the unlucky member of staff to have been forced to bushwhack on the first day. I believe they were doing the same thing we did, only that they at least had time to get out before it was dark. If they decided to do Sharp Peak, I'm sure they would have ended up like us.
Their route was quite direct, following fairly straight bearings to follow, hence allowing them to walk blindly. They covered 25 km in total during the trip, with more than 3 km being road-marches.
So did Guan Yiu, Alex Yau and I go up Sharp Peak? No. We actually had 4 chances in which it was possible to slip that in. But they were all turned down. Here they are, in order.
1. At the base of Sharp Peak, we tried to convince Ms Stringer and group 10 to wait 15 minutes while we dropped our bags and ran up. Guan Yiu used his crybaby tactics, Alex tried false reasoning and lying (two minutes up first part, two minutes second part, ...., here you go! 15 minutes) and I suggested that maybe another group will come around and we will join them. All were turned down before we even got there, because Sharp Peak looked like it was growing larger and larger as we approached.
2. When the group was debating whether to abandon the plan to go up the ridge or take a bushy, sketchy contour path, Ms Cowland called to ask where we were. She insisted that that it was already too late, and that it wouldn't be fair for us to force others to wait. We tried the same things, but they got turned down by a warning from Ms Stringer, who said that no one would be there to rescue us if we rolled off the mountain.
3. When we got to the Ham Tin Restaurant, we asked if we could drop our bags and run for Sharp Peak. It was 17:00 by then, and the teachers already had some ideas to keep us occupied. Again, Alex tried his 15-minute sprint argument, but Mr Gardner tested his physics and distracted him.
4. On the second day, we came up with a plan. We tried the whole thing again on Group 6. But the fierce wind (even worse than yesterday) was so bad you couldn't talk to someone only 1 meter away. Imagine what it would be like on the top of Sharp Peak. Incidentally, the peak was covered by a cloud that was moving quite fast.
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