I sat in solitude on the pier, watching the evening slowly draw in from the dusk and listened to the local muezzin’s prayer calls disappear northwards in to the jungle. Behind me some locals sat coolly on their 50cc scooters beneath the buzzing fluorescent lights smoking harsh Malaysian tobacco, playing cards and casually fishing with a rickety hand line.
I had come here hoping to make the third ascent of the Dragon’s Horns only existing route on Tioman Island, Malaysia; two granite spires rising over one thousand five hundred feet above the forest canopy and now only just visible against the silken black sky. I had waited five days for a climbing partner to turn up, each day passing with a broken promise and another nonsensical explanation as to why they failed to show up. The Dragon’s Horns had consumed my mind for two years since reading about the inspiring first ascent of the south face completed by Scotty Nelson and Nick Tomlin in 2000. Without choice this dream had become an all-encompassing part of myself and I was beginning to despair if I would ever achieve what I set out to accomplish.
I continued to sit on the pier musing over these thoughts and tried forget my feelings of disappointment by watching a white-bellied sea eagle draw circles around a ring of cloud that had now enshrouded the main Dragon’s Horns, the larger of the two towers.
A young man sat alone with a face etched in melancholy isn’t something you’d expect to see in a tropical paradise and it certainly wasn’t something I was expecting either. However, what was to happen in the next few seconds was a poignant and symbolic event; the tight ring of cloud that had taken its grip around the upper reaches of the main tower began to steadily flash and flicker and suddenly it released a single bolt of lightning that cracked horizontally across the night sky to then explode against its upper face. I continued to watch the lightning wrap its electric tendrils around the tower as the sea eagle, now silhouetted against the fallen night sky, continued to soar on the warm day’s air rising from below.
In this surreal moment I felt a sense of calm in knowing that, although I could not foretell my future and where the subsequent years would take me, I could still make myself a promise to always carry in me the mystery and intrigue I felt in that moment and to one day use it to bring me back to the Dragon’s Horns.