Flying across the choppy emerald waters of the South China Sea on a rickety two-engine speedboat, I watch a flock of gulls take to flight as the 1,200? twin towers Nenek Semekit come into view. Excitement and curiosity grab my attention as I ignore my climbing partner, Hank, who is pointing out some boulders on a neighboring beach. Approaching from the East, the towers appear to be covered with a thick carpet of jungle vegetation. After thirty three hours of planes and buses the curiosity is almost too much to bear; did we travel all this way find a face that is too vegetated to climb or is there clean rock? As we round the southern end of Tioman Island, the south face appears; it is clean and impressively steep. Hank in his typically understated way, says, ?Looks good.?


One of several small Malaysian islands, Tioman was named after the indigenous Tio bird, renowned for its startling ability to parrot not only the words of a phrase but also voice tone. Local legend explains that Nenek Semekit (or the Dragon?s Horns) - the only rock towers on the island - were created when an evil dragon cast a spell on a local woman, turning her and her husband into stone. Their three children did not escape the spell and now sit beneath them, just off-shore, as tiny islands.

The southernmost Dragon?s Horn (the wife) dominates its partner with an imposing vertical south face. Hank and I have come to attempt the first free ascent of this formation. It was first climbed by Scotty Nelson and Nick Tomlin in 2000, establishing Waking Dream ? 5.9, A2, 10 pitches. The route is a direct line, tackling the steepest section of the wall. Waking Dream was then repeated by a nationally sponsored Malaysian team. Despite the sponsorship, the team was limited in resources; they used homemade haul bags fashioned from sugar gunny sacks and beach hammocks as portaledges. This ascent took two tries; they attempted it first in 2001, and then a year later summited on August 31, 2002 ? Malaysia?s National Day. Team members Arin and Rozmann are two of Malaysia?s strongest climbers but had limited experience on big-walls; they invested much of 2001 in training with a Swiss guide to learn the necessary skills. As the expedition date grew close, the climbers held a press conference, and suddenly their goal came under the nation?s eye. ?With the whole nation watching us, our personal deadline of reaching the summit on August 31st (Malaysia's National Day) immediately took a new significance.? Their successful ascent made front-page news in the Malaysian Star. Projects of ?national pride? have entered the government?s work since the mid-nineties, when Malaysia emerged as a rapidly developing economy. It is nice to learn that our sport made the list.


Hank Jones, a burly, rock-crushing stone mason, is my partner for this adventure. When I met up with him in Malaysia, I hadn?t seen him for over a year. He had been living all winter in Australia, mostly surfing. Hank wanted to spend time down-under, and Bush?s re-election last fall provided just the right motivation to leave the U.S. With many people I would be concerned that my partner had only climbed a handful of days over the past five months, but with Hank I was not ? for two reasons: first, Hank has the kind of solid background experience that doesn?t dissolve in five months of ocean time. For example, he made the first free ascent of the Vampire Spire last summer, consistently boulders HARD, and has spent many seasons in Colorado blitzing free-climbs throughout the Park. Second, to quote Dale Goddard from a 1994 interview in Rock and Ice, ?Doing hard routes depends more on how you live your life inside your head than what you do outside it.? Spend time with Hank and it is clear that he understands how important it is to live well by the thoughts you keep. For this reason he not only climbs well, but will make an uncompromisingly dependable, reliable, and fun traveling companion.


As our speed-boat slows to ferry into the town of Mukut we see barracuda, schools of smaller fish, and sea turtles in the clear emerald water. With only one central walking path and no roads or vehicles, time is pleasantly slow and peaceful in the village. People walk languidly, coast on bicycles, smile and say hello, and speak in a mindful, unhurried manner. Mangoes, coconuts and bananas grow wild and in abundance. So plenteous are the mangoes that the constant thud-thud as they drop onto the ground and the occasional reverberating THUNK when one lands on a tin roof give the only signs of danger in Mukut. More copious than the fruit is the genuine goodwill and kindheartedness of the villagers. Many locals ask us to flash our lights down to them when we sleep on the wall. Apparently, during one bivy, the Malaysian team pulsed their lights towards the town, and to their surprise the whole village of Mukut responded. In an article in the Malaysian Star, Arin recalled: ?We had no portaledge, so during the evening, lying in hammocks tied securely to the rock, we entertained ourselves by communicating with the people of Mukut using torchlight. As we flashed our torches towards the coast far below, our friends replied, pinpricks of light flickering back from the jetty, houses, and even from fishing boats leaving before dawn.? Despite a significant language barrier, we feel support and genuine goodwill from every local we encounter.


As we settle into town, which will be our basecamp for the next ten days, we are advised to register with the police. The Mukut Chief of Police is a relaxed man with slow happy eyes. He apparently has few worries or work on this tranquil island. Gently pulling on a fragrant clove cigarette, he tells us he is happy we are here but warns us that it has been some years since anybody has made the hike through the jungle to reach the base of the Dragon?s Horn. He generously loans us a machete, but we don?t take his advice too seriously ? instead, we think of coconuts. We spend a good portion of the afternoon foraging and climbing for the fruit and find the machete to be the perfect tool for opening fresh coconut. The flesh is soft and tender, only mildly sweet, but buttery and filling.


?Aaarrgh, you bastards,? Hank declares at 5 am while trying to prepare breakfast. The mangoes are abundant, but only one in ten can be sliced open without ant-like bugs swarming out from inside the fruit. With fingers sticky from searching for clean mango meat, we set out before dawn to avoid the heat. However, we learn that there is no escaping the heat in an equatorial jungle. Leaving early, we do avoid the relentless midday screeching of the cicadas and instead enjoy a rich chorus of early morning birdsongs. Midway through our approach, as we leave an established trekking route and start on the trail established by the two prior climbing teams, I understand why the police chief gave us the machete. However, a big steel blade is no match for these plants? honed defense systems. In a few moments I am trapped like a fly in a spider?s web, where moving is a ghastly idea because this web cuts. The only way out is to slowly and carefully pluck off the thin sinuous tentacles of the plants. They are laced with a series of barbs that must be backed out of the skin as you?d remove a fishhook. Because we can?t easily see the wispy tentacles that catch, we quickly learn that our best defense is to identify the plant, sneak up low on its trunk and take it out before it gets us.


We slog for three days, hacking and sweating in the steamy-hot jungle air to open the approach and find the route. Both of us look like we have spent this time wrestling in a briar patch with a raccoon. I am covered in oozing scratches and nursing infected wounds. Once at the foot of the Dragon?s Horn we are unable to see through the canopy for a clear view of the wall and therefore spend quite a bit of time fumbling along the base. Eventually, a scrambling, machete-swinging, vine-climbing 4th class jungle-gully leads us to climbable rock.


Once on the wall momentum naturally and easily picks up ? after all, this, not fighting jungle plants, is the challenge we have come for and we are exhilarated to find solid, clean rock. The featured gneiss of the Dragon?s Horn varies from coarse and heavily featured, to smooth, water-polished, blank sections. For the next three days we commute daily through the jungle from town to the wall, and as our trail becomes established, we make consistent progress up the wall.


The first pitch, enclosed in the canopy, involves a deadpoint made difficult from wet and slippery feet. Once above the canopy a consistent breeze and dry rock reward and relieve us from our jungle experience. Pitch three: a 5.12 soaring left-facing, arching dihedral and one of the best I have climbed anywhere. Polished creamy white and slick as glass, 70? of vertical laybacking in a comfortably rounded yet incut crack makes for a beautifully flowing pitch, made pumpy by insecure, slippery smears. After this, onsighting a pitch of steep and intricate 5.11 corner climbing pumps my forearms and mind more than onsighting a pitch two number grades harder. I am cleaning grasses and soil out of gear placements and handholds on lead in overhanging terrain, trying to look ahead despite the dirt in my eyes, not knowing if I will run out of holds and gear. A mantle-flop-face-smear onto a small belay stance leads to a delicate, off-vertical scary 5.12 corner on thin rps, sliding nuts and rusty ? inch rivets, which then leads to?

Three days (no climbing) later, sitting on the porch of our little shanty at five in the morning I am listening to the eerily amplified chanting of morning prayer coming from the mosque, and looking out through a series of tiny waterfalls streaming out of the corrugations of our tin roof. It looks like yet another rest day. During our last climbing day, a severely toxic wasp stung my leg and caused it to swell to twice its size. After two days of limping around town waiting for my leg to recover, it is still sore and swollen. For this reason the heavy rain has a somewhat soothing sound.

Momentum can shift as quickly and unexpectedly as the wind. A few days ago we were chugging up, steadily freeing all the terrain we encountered and then ZAP ? stung by a killer bee, and then SMASH ? found ourselves hanging beneath a fifteen-foot rivet ladder on a blank section of rock, thinking about the legend of the Mukut woman frozen into this tower. She was a virtuous woman living a simple life, and then all of a sudden?a mountain. I related to this story of fate?s sudden swerves, as I dangled on this un-climbable rivet ladder.

The more I climb the more I realize just how ephemeral and fleeting the satisfaction derived from reaching a goal is. What lasts is the struggle ? Did I face the challenge with a true and playful spirit? Did my energy whither when things got difficult or did I embrace the excitement of the challenge? Outcomes are secondary to the answers to these questions. A successful ascent can blow confidence and momentum into your sails, but so does ?failure? carry the opportunity to teach you lasting lessons and develop deeply rooted motivation.

As much as ?failure? and ?success? can both have positive effects, I am goal-oriented just like any other climber and, truth be told, the idea of having a free ascent shut down by a 15-foot section just didn?t sit well. The next day cleared up and we jugged to our high point. We climbed easily to the summit via 5.9 and 5.10 terrain on clean, exposed, water worn slabs and a final pitch of jungleering through the typical thorny nightmare as well as a thick ground layer of water filled pitcher plants. A short respite on the rounded granite knob of a summit, and we began rappelling. On the way down, just beneath the rivet ladder, I spotted a possible traverse to gain a streak of grasses and bushes. As I cleaned out tufts of grass, a crack system along with positive pinches, edges and gear placements emerged. With a little bit of toproping, this section developed into a steep 5.12 pitch, accessed by a run-out and airy 5.13a traverse. We headed down, pulling our fixed lines for a single push free attempt.

Scrambling back up through the 4th class jungle gully at 7:00am, my throat tightens and stomach lightens at the prospect of putting together the past week?s effort into a seamless climb. Hank, who has been nothing but solid in every respect through the variety of challenges faced up to this point, kindly gives me the opportunity to lead every pitch. After a couple of fumbled attempts on the first pitch (A 5.12a pitch, it is by no means the crux, but is still damp from last night?s dew), I put things in order and we climb the route quickly and smoothly, without any lead falls, and Hank frees every pitch as well.

Down and off our now well worn trail, we drop our packs, run across the beach of washed up coral and into the warm ocean. I swim out a bit and look back on the wall. Somehow it all seems to have passed like a dream during a hot jungle night.