Trail running at Kota Damansara Community Forest (KDCF)

Another popular place where you can go trail running or hiking around Kuala Lumpur which is very popular as well is in Kota Damansa. The place is called Kota Damansara Community Forest (KDCF) and is reasonably big with some elevation (yet a lot less than Bukit Kiara, Bukit Gasing or Kemensah).

Where is it ?

As the name indicates, the location is near Kota Damansara.

 

The forest is reasonably big and there are – to my knowledge – two main areas to enter it:

1. The side road entrance (1 entrance)
2. The school and lake area (3 entrances)

The side road entrance has ample parking space along the road (Jalan Rumba Riang 9/1). The exact entrance coordinate 3°10’54.7″N 101°35’03.8″E or Google Maps link: https://goo.gl/maps/nrLrZMroya32. Below some photos of the entrance:

The school area entrance is located at Jalan Merbah 10/1 (https://goo.gl/maps/NijCpLHk1gq , coordinates 3.1680207 101.5804665 ). There is a gazebo used by mountain bikers. The trail entrance is just behind the gazebo area.

I’m not sure about parking in this area. I have seen cars along the road but not sure if it’s legal. The two other entrances are also on the same road around the lake:

There are other roads around the forest but there is no trails entrance there (as far as I know). They are actually in private areas (residential) of gated communities. It seems that the forest is slowly eaten by developers.

What are the trails like ?

One thing to be said first is that these trails are shared between hikers, runners and biker (mountain bike). No one owns the place and everyone shares it together, so be nice with other users and help each other in case of any problems.

There is an official map of trails available at http://kotadamansaraforest.org/trail-network/. I’m reproducing it here but do go visit their page as they give explanation about the trails. Very good work from them. Traks is also involved in the building and maintenance of trails there.

I found another map online from Traks, who helps maintain the trails network. It has some more trails and future ones:

The map of the trails I have been to on a MURA organised run:

That particular route we took is about 15-16 kilometres. If you stick to smaller sections you can do everything from 2-3km to 10km easily. The trails are for most part very runnable and not too steep (except some few areas. If you stick to the main trails it’s not steep, rolling hill type at most. There are less “common” trails there that are more for hiking. They bring you through small streams crossing and to the top of the hill with the view of the highway (nice view). You can see them in purple on the map below:

The big point is the top of the hill with view of the highway while the smaller dot is the crossing with the big log.

So KDCF is a really great place to go hike. You can spend hours there. Another great spot right at the outskirt of KL.