It’s the first hike of 2022 so we wanted a trail with 1) unbeatable views of the city, 2) short distance and 3) an easy hike. So we went to Lion Rock – taking the shortest route via the Lion’s tail. But a short cut doesn’t necessarily mean an easy path!

We realized 0.5km of our 4km hike that it was 1 & 2, but definitely not 3. In fact, it was the hardest hike we’ve done as a family. Not to mention — the most dangerous too! Parents, you can judge us now — just make sure not to follow our lead!!!

But in our defense, we saw the rough road route and thought this would be quite an exciting hike. We find it a bit boring to just follow a paved path. It started quite ok…

…until the path got a bit steep.

And steeper.

When we stumbled upon a pile of huge rock that looked somehow flat on top, we thought that could be a place to stop and have our lunch.

Aya went ahead and rock climbed…

I followed Aya and my knees wobbled a bit as I wasn’t as flexible as her. I managed to climb after a bit of a struggle. It was magnificent on top of the rock but also very scary! If we fall over, we’ll just roll on boulders and cliffs!

Aaron then helped Lukey up the rock. But Aaron was the one who struggled the most. He’s the heaviest of us all and not really that flexible. I had to pull him up thinking, if he dragged me down instead, our kids will be left on top of that massive rock.

Anyway, I managed to help Aaron up. But instead of rock climbing, it became rock crawling! He literally dragged himself on top of the huge rock, leaving him with scratched and bleeding knee.

Too bad there were no photos of the rocky area. I honestly was tempted to snap one but it was a too risky, with no second to spare other than make sure we got out of our situation in one piece.

So even with our stomachs growling, we had to scramble up the rocky area to a safe location. Once we felt everyone was finally ok — Aaron grabbed the phone to take photos of the pile of rocks we just climbed.

We soldiered on until we found a safer spot to have lunch!

It was already 3pm when we had our lunch and we still had a long way to go to reach Lion Rock. Afraid that the sun will set on us on this crazy path, we continued with the hike up…

And when we got to the top, there was a warning sign about the path we took! That would have been helpful from where we climbed up!

We took a quick break, enjoyed the view and took some photos to remember the day!

Done with the danger for the day (or ever…), we took the safest route down.

A paved path is not so boring after all!