This is the first hill climb ride that I planned and accomplished. Aditya and myself decided to conquer this route today. Brimore is a place near Ponmudi known for its estates and a waterfalls. I charted the route map and we started by 06:00 AM in the morning from the front gate of IIST campus.
The route was through Chullimanoor, Palode and then Brimore. The route from Chullimanoor to Palode is familiar and we crossed it easily, then a scenic view point was found by me on the way to Brimore from Palode. A small hill top, the sunrise on that hilltop was amazing. The view with westernghats, the sun and nearby greeneries, morning ambience, was unbeatable. There we took some photos and videos, here I took one of my dreamshots of having my bike on my hand like a trophie. Then we left to continue the ride.
There were a few fake points for me to guess like it is the starting point of hill climb to Brimore. The route was amazingly beautiful and later it turned out to be dangerous as well which I experienced during the return ride, that I will describe later.
We reached a small checkpost to Brimore and had a coffee and a snack. We were carrying energy bars with us. The first stupid thing I did was that I didn’t check the availability of shops in Brimore. We continued the ride upto the actual checkpost of Brimore and stopped there for a short break, where we paid the entrance fee for the gate pass and continued to climb.
This is another thing that I have to check and confirm hereafter, whether the roads are paved or not. On the RideWithGPS site, the road was marked as paved, but the actual road is gravel kind. We were able to ride up for a while then started to walk. As we both are new to this place, we didn’t know where to look for what.
Actually, that was a good experience too. We saw small falls, and the actual waterfall but went on a wrong season to find a reduced water flow. Then, we went on a route to check a helipad and a bunglaow which the gatekeeper told us to be a good view point. But, we went on a route that I planned initially to reach Ponmudi top from Brimore.
I had a plan to reach Ponmudi top from Brimore and saw a route to achieve that too. The google maps showed it to be a trekking route and we decided to try it out. But, the route was closed just 1 kilometer away from Ponmudi top, later I came to know that the route is blocked for general public.
We both were tired of climb, so decided to decend without getting to helipad and other places as that will be another climb. We reached the checkpost, collected our passes and left to reach campus. We planned to have lunch in the nearby town. On the way, a tragic happened.
Aditya got slipped on a tight turn and dragged on the road till the barricade. It was because of bad tyres and brake conditions that he had. Luckily, I heard him crash as I was a few meters ahead of him and there was no vehicles ahead or behind us. The crash was severe, he had scratches on his upper arms and legs. Again, luckily he slid under the barricade instead of crashing onto it, which would have been much severe.
Aditya said that he cannot continue the ride, so I arranged an auto to take him and his bike to the campus and I started to ride back to campus.
It was so hot as the time is past noon. I couldn’t ride with full momentum, so I took another stupid decision of taking a diversion from Palode to Vithura so as to avoid the later climb that I will face near Chullimanoor. But, the route I took to Vithura had bad climbs than the one I avoided.
I neither had mindset to have lunch nor to take a break till the afternoon heat drops. That crash was running on my mind. So, I stopped at a shop and had couple of bananas and continued to reach Vithura.
After reaching Vithura, I continued towards Valiamala and took a couple of breaks on the way to refill my bottles with water and hydration powder. I got a call from Aditya that he reached the campus safely, that gave me a good mindset to continue and battle the heat to way up to campus.
I reached campus by around 3 PM and checked on Aditya’s status. He was fine and was taking a nap. So, I went to room and thought of taking rest, but I didn’t feel tired at all despite having a single longest climb of 728 meters, which is the highest single stretch climb I made upto now. So, I cleaned my bike, and did some room management stuff.
Overall the ride was good, if we subtract the crash and two more falls that Aditya had due to the clipless pedals and gravel road. The lessons learned are that, I have to double check and confirm the paved roads on my route and also confirm that there are shops to refuel.
Below are the photos and video taken during the ride.
Below is the Strava log of this ride.
