Merthi Gudda - A 'technical' trek

 Merthi Gudda - A 'technical' trek

Monsoon treks in Western Ghat is an experience in itself. You do it just for the experience of trekking, because most likely your views are going to be cloudy. And then there are leeches as well, you have to get used to them. Wet trails, slippery rocks, slushy ground, all makes the trek to be fairly interesting, sometimes risky as well. 

Merthi Gudda is a lesser known peak in the Kudremukh range. Our plan was to do Kudremukh trek but due to some incident (someone had died), they had closed the trek for two weeks. Our plan then changed to go to Merthi Gudda. This was a guided trek organized by Shyam, an avid runner. I got connected via my running group (JJ - Jayanagar Jaguars) 

Shyam was really awesome and so were my trek friends. Theirs was an existing circle and I was the newbie noob.  Most of them were kannadigas but they made me feel welcome. They helped me a lot in the trail when some patches were difficult to climb.

The itinerary - Take the bus from Majestic on Fri night. Reach Kalasa in the morning. Get a hotel to freshen up. Have an early breakfast and start the trek. Finish the trek by evening, go back to hotel and clean up. Dinner and take the bus back on Sat night. The Sat night bus was sleeper and Fri night was semi-sleeper. It was a packed schedule. We were asked to carry tiffin boxes for packed lunch. 

The trail of Merthi Gudda is amazing. I loved it. It was 'technical' - a new term shared by Shyam during the trail. I liked the term, did not understood it how a trail can be 'technical'. But on the trail I realized why was it called so - it was not a slam dunk easy. The trek will be called moderate difficulty level but there are some portions, like some rock steps where one has to take extra precautions (and sometimes support of peers) to climb up. 

There were leeches but I did not bother - that is the trick. It had a decent uphill climb, first 20 mins in sludgy mud where I struggled. And some more climbs after that :) But the best part of this trail is that a significant portion is ridge walk - you walk from one hill to another, walking on the ridge. I have always wanted to do ridge walks.  Whenever I see hill outlines from a distance, my first thought is how it will be to walk on the ridge, LOTR scenes on ridge walks were my fav as well, they had always fascinated me. Ridge walks made this trail awesome but I also learnt a lesson - Ridge walks are not that easy either, sure it depends on the ridge but not all of it was easy. 

We climbed couple of hills,  one was a steep one. The hill tops were view-less, surrounded by clouds, extremely windy. It rained most of the time, raincoats were helpful. Truth be told, compared to the gang, I had struggled, I was the last one in the group. They were very kind to give me company in the end, I was not a lot behind but my fitness or the lack of it was in display. I was also trekking after a very long time. My fitness thankfully had improved due to recent runs. I was ok, not that bad either but not like them. 

We had our packed lunch somewhere between hills. I had got some leech bites but it was not painful. The walk down was through this amazing treeline - this is yet another awesome thing about this trail - the upstream and downstream are totally different trails.  We walked a total of about 9kms. I was fairly tired by the end of it. 

Back at the hotel, there was no hot water so a cold bath was also an experience. I slept like a baby in the bus ride back. And slept through most of my Sunday as well :) Overall, very happy to have done the trek. Liked the trail, the group and everything about it.