Gunung Panjang is a large limestone hill in the Kinta Valley, near Ipoh in Perak, Malaysia. Panjang is best known for the rock paintings at Gua Tambun - although the drawings are actually on a cliff face, not in a cave.
In the past Gunung Panjang has been mined for iron ore. There was an iron mine on the northwest side, around the area where the paintings are. And in several places the red colour can be seen on the rock face.
At the end of 2011 I was told that a man living in the housing estate at the base of the northeast side of the hill had found a cave. In Dec 2011 I went with Hong to see if we could find it. However we didn't know the location and it was a bit daunting looking at the steep hill
We bashed our way through the vegetation upto the base of the cliff but found nothing, so gave up. In July 2012 we returned, this time led by Brett, the guy who found the cave. This is the view of the area from his house
The trail starts in the park
Almost immediately we had to start climbing. The route was very steep. Thankfully Brett had brought along some secateurs which he used to remove rattan and other thorns and creepers. This really helped.
We entered the gap in the hill and went on up to a tunnel. This tunnel was used by the miners, presumably to extract the iron ore from the wang inside. There are still signs of cables on the hill, it seems the miners hauled their machinery up the hill and blasted the tunnel to access the wang.
These shot holes show the tunnel has been blasted.
View into the wang from the tunnel We went down into the wang heading towards the cave in the left wall. It was more or less across on the other side
The cave entrance is rather small. It leads to a passage which slopes down to a drop which I couldn't descend without a rope. There were some nice crystals
View looking up to the entrance. We made our way back, checking one wall for caves but found nothing. There were some monophyllaea on the wall
These google earth images show roughly where we went, almost across the hill from the rock paintings
I named the cave
Panjang Wang Cave.
© Liz Price
No reproduction without permission
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