Adventures in Asia: Mount Kinabalu, Malaysia

Early yesterday morning I was picked up at my hotel in KK and driven a couple of hours to the base of Mount Kinabalu to begin my climb! Although not exceptionally tall at less than 4,100 metres, Mt Kinabalu is significantly higher than any of its surroundings, so we could see the mountain as we left the city . . .

. . . and from the highway as we approached.

This is the park gate, which we reached around 8:30.

Here, all the climbers registered, received a bagged lunch, did rapid COVID tests (if we had not already done so), and met our guides. My guide was named Freendy. Once ready, we were shuttled another ten minutes or so further (and somewhat upward) into the park to the summit trail's trailhead.

The trail is steep, and fairly consistently so, gaining something like 200-250 metres every kilometre. If you take the time to look around, however, it is a stunningly beautiful climb.

Around every kilometre or half kilometre or so there is a shelter with benches and tables. We were making good time, especially at first, and we were only resting at every other shelter or so. It was cloudy, and occasionally there were a few rain drops, but nothing troublesome, and I was happy with how cool it was (17 C when we started out).

Here are some more pictures from the climb.

One thing that is interesting is that everything that goes up Mount Kinabalu goes up by foot--generator fuel, food, water, building supplies, and so on. The porters apparently earn a fairly decent wage doing this work, but they certainly have to be in good shape!

Notice how high up on their backs they carry the loads, and they actually wear a head strap as well as straps around their torsos. In the guesthouse there is a large photo to demonstrate how your mattress arrived on your bed!

In terms of flora and fauna, the mountain is generally tremendously beautiful, and it is interesting to observe how the ecosystem changes with elevation. I found the plant life at the highest elevation, where it is least dense and smallest, the most beautiful, interestingly enough. The most interesting specific plant I saw were these "fly trap" flowers my guide pointed out to me.

As strong as I felt starting out, as we hit 2500 m or so and the fifth kilometre I was starting to suffer. I was stopping regularly to catch my breath and my pace dropped off dramatically. Still, we were the first climbers of the day to reach the guesthouse. It was around 12:30, so it had taken us three and half hours, which was actually a pretty fast climb compared to average. Probably I should have taken it slower, however, because I had a bad headache and was not feeling well. 

I was staying in the Laban Rata facility.

There are washrooms, a kitchen, and a small store here, as well as several dorm rooms.

After some lunch and a cold shower (no hot water up here since an earthquake some years ago), I went to bed for a few hours. I woke up feeling a little, but not entirely, better. Before dinner I explored the guesthouse a little bit. There are a lot of interesting photos and such on the walls.

How about this for a wedding photo shoot! 

It is the middle of November in a majority-Muslim country in a building in which everything has been brought up on somebody's back and look what they are setting up today!

I also went outside on the balcony to take in the view.

Dinner is provided buffet-style and is actually pretty good, although my stomach was not feeling well enough to eat a significant amount of food.

I was back in bed very early, but struggling to breath. I assume some of this was the altitude, but I almost felt like I was experiencing a bit of a panic attack. I paced the hall trying to collect myself and relax. Eventually I found focused breathing helped and I lay back down and "breathed myself" to sleep.

Given the pace we had climbed yesterday, my guide suggested we start out this morning later than most. That meant I got to "sleep in" until 2:30! A dinner/breakfast is served, but again I did not find myself wanting to eat very much.

We started our ascent at 3:00, head lamps on and bundled up against the cold. Obviously smartphone photos at this time of day are not going to be much use, but I did take some to give a sense of the darkness.

The crisp air was refreshing and I actually found hiking at this time to be lovely. Again, we were making good time, passing many others. My guide held us back a few times, but it was cold when we were not moving and I was certainly motivated to get to the summit! The climbing is hard in places, including very close to the summit where some scrambling is required, but mostly after the tree line the slope is fairly gentle and the surface mostly flat which makes for comfortable climbing. The idea is to reach the summit around sunrise, but we were too fast and got there at 5:30.

My guide suggested we wait for sunrise, but after about ten minutes I was much too cold, so we started descending. I am very happy I made this decision, because while it meant I did not get to watch the sunrise from the summit, we did get to watch the sunrise further down the mountain and here we had the mountain mostly to ourselves! Here are the first views of the sun coming up (around 6:00, by the way).

Now with daylight, I could look back to see the peak. Notice the rope is there for those needing it, but my guide said unless the rock is wet it usually is not necessary. You can also see all the other climbers still heading up to the summit--it was already getting crowded as we left around 5:40, so I can only imagine how crowded it might get at sunrise!

I paused many times on the initial descent to soak it all in and take photos. It was really an invigorating spot to be. At one point I had my arms in the air for no apparent reason!

This is my guide in front of me, by the way, with what felt like all of Borneo just ahead of us.

Here I am looking back at the last checkpoint before the summit. All climbers have to check in here. There used to be a guesthouse there too, but it was destroyed by an earthquake.

The main guesthouse complex (where I stayed) can be seen way down in the picture below.

Here are some more photos from around where we crossed back into the tree line.

We reached the guesthouse at 7:00, the first climbers back and far earlier than the planned schedule, but it gave me time to take a nap before breakfast, which starts at 8:00. After breakfast I mailed a postcard from the highest mailbox in Malyasia!

My guide was eager to begin descending the rest of the way, so we started out around 8:40. The descent from the rest house was surprisingly difficult. The rock placement that helped climbing, made it challenging to descend, I found, and I struggled to keep up with my guide, who apparently had no difficulty! I actually fell two or three times, and ripped my pants at one point. But, we made it. We reached the trailhead at 11:30. From here, a shuttle drove me to a restaurant nearby, where a buffet lunch was provided. I was actually most excited for the espresso coffee, but the buffet was good too and I ate plenty. A fellow climber, a young guy from Australia joined me at lunch as we waited for our ride back to the city. The first van back to Kota Kinabalu is at 13:00. We were handed these remarkable certificates on our way out of the park. Pretty fancy!