Penang Hills and Trails
Above Jalan Bukit Elvira

This is one of a series of pages on walking the hills of Penang, click here for the index. This is a Grade 2 walk albeit with a minimal 'off piste' section.

Please visit my Penang buses page for information on accessing the starting point. Basically it would be easy enough to walk out to the starting point (and back) from Balik Pulau town.

Yuehong's bad knee has created a need for a bank of undemanding hikes which has been in part satisfied by the area to the north-west of Balik Pulau. The hill above Jalan Bukit Elvira on the west side has been part cleared and a month ago we had almost completed mapping that hill and its connections with Jalan Chai. This short hike completed the job for the time being. 

Click on the thumbnail for a larger version of the picture and click on that to return here.

Again we parked at the Roman Catholic Cemetery, these are actually last time's pictures, hence rather greener as the rains are well and truly over! There's plenty of parking available including this shady spot. Just below (to the left as viewed here) is a motorable track heading towards the hills. It's a well maintained mature durian orchard.

Very soon we took this path right and the immediate first left. That on the right is where we came down before.

It's a very new path, in fact, it's incomplete and needs sealing. We could see the other path on our right as we climbed. 

At the end of our path we skipped across to it, coming out at this junction. Last time we had come up from the left, today we continued to the right.

If we had been patient we could have stayed on it as it did a zigzag but as we could see our desired point on the ridge we took a short cut. Yuehong is actually still pretty good at going uphill so I didn't expect any complaints when I asked her to scramble up to the ridge. Getting down to the path just below was another matter and needed a form of zigzag. 

We headed north, turning right and immediately left into an area which has been part cleared. "No problem" because it was slightly uphill and we had been up here not so long ago.

This is the view from the minor summit, on the larger version just to the right of the centre of the image, you might be able to pick out several electricity poles which we knew were on an upper section of Jalan Bukit Elvira and which were our next target. We just had to make what looked a fairly straightforward transit. We could have gone down and up part way on concrete but elected to maintain our height although this section had to be taken slowly as it was slightly overgrown and not very even.

At the end we could see a netting fence which seemed to have collapsed in one part so over we went. Round to the right we went following the edge of the new orchard, the black objects are netting to protect the young durian trees.

We were now within striking distance of the electricity poles. Yuehong quickly spotted a new concrete path which passed this small hut. 

From here, the path went slightly down and then a U bend set us on course, the road is just visible in the background on the right in the second picture.

I must have got excited at the prospect of some refreshment as I seem to have put a sticky finger on the lens. We were actually at no great height now and soon reached the section that runs more or less straight from the cemetery, The final picture shows where we had been on the ridge. Some years ago, there was a path of sorts down through rubber on the left but both seem to have vanished now. Job done stuff, just 3km and about an hour and a half. It was all we needed, the day before we had hiked up to the Da Ba Gong temple above Titi Kerawang where they were holding one of their famous feasts.