Advertisement
Published: January 30th 2009
Sorry for taking half a year to post this blog.. This blog is a description of my expedition to the summit of the 20th tallest summit in the world! My trip to Mt. Kinabalu, the tallest mountain in Malaysia, and 4th tallest in South East Asia at 4095 meters was one hell of an adventure, during which at times I thought I was going to die!
This is an email I sent out from Kota Kinabalu a day after I returned from my 2 day trip from the national park:
I just got back from Mt. Kinabalu... It was the most extreme thing I have ever done. Also the most dangerous!!!
At times I was pulling myself up on a rope up the mountain side on wet granite rock at a 45 degree angle. I though I was gonna die! It was divided into 2 days. First day was a 4.5 hour hike of 6K"M through forest and low brush to an elevation of 3k"m. And then the next day at 3am we set up in the dark with flash lights for the hardest part of the climb for another 2.5 k"m to reach the summit before
sunrise. If you make a wrong move you would role down the side of the mountain. We were dragging ourselves up on ropes in zigzags crisscrossing trying to place our feet in small crevasses for balance up the mountain. Bare in mind it was wet!!! There is no vegetation at that elevation and so if you rolled off you'd die. At certain points I was on four crawling up because it was so physically and mentally draining.
Once I could see the summit, that became the most difficult and steep part of the climb but there there were boulders to pull myself up on. I was motivating myself by saying "come on Dicks your almost there! On the way up I also did some wrong move and hurt my left knee which made every step painful.
At last I reached the summit at 540am while it was still dark. I waited up there until it started getting light. Around 630am once the sun began to show I pulled out my digital camera but of course all my batteries were depleted. What a sad ending to reach all the way to the summit and take ZERO pictures for proof
of this majestic beauty!
I tried at least a dozen batteries and none worked. Then I decided to ask and the first couple that I asked had spare batteries!
Thank God I was saved! I took plenty of pictures and I'll try and get them up ASAP!
The descent was even harder. I was sitting on my butt for the first part and then stood up for part of the descent where we were passing a plateau with a negative slope. I was walking down slowly while leaning back to avoid falling straight forward. I also had to watch out for the wet spots.
The hardest part though was getting down the rope section. It is 10 times harder to go down than go up.
I made it back to mid point camp after almost 2 hours and was very thankful! I never want to do that again and would not recommend it willingly!
After breakfast I kept on to reach the base and midway it began pouring but with the exception of a few almost falls from the wet rocks and being partially soaked (had a poncho) I made it down in 2
hours and 25 minutes!
Although I promised myself never to do it again, I am contemplating doing it again... But if you take a look at the recommendation of Lonely Planet they mention you have to be moderately in shape... THATS AN UNDERSTATEMENT! YOU HAVE TO BE SUPER IN SHAPE!!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.081s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 53; dbt: 0.0531s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
JDTG2003
Johnny D.
It was great to read your blog, thanks for showing it. But... I'm "not really sure" about doing the trip, because of all your " I thought I was gonna die!!!"s... ;) Safe travels and enjoy! Joek (from Holland, now "from Akinabalu KK")