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Published: November 29th 2005
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The scuba diving and crocodile hunting put us into a fairly adventurous mood, so we decided to climb the highest mountain in south east Asia. Mount Kinabalu stands 4,095.2 meters above sea level. To put this in perspective, it is about half the height of Everest, and a little bit higher than Mt. Robson (highest mountain in Canada). The great thing about Mt. Kinabalu is that you don’t need ice axes and crampons to reach the summit - it is right near the equator and there is no snow!
We arrived at the national park below the mountain to book accommodation at the base camp, obtain a permit to climb to the summit, and to hire a guide. Once this was all taken care of, we had an early night in a little wooden shack full of mosquitoes. Every 10 seconds I would hear that distinctive buzz in my ear. I killed several, smeared my face with bug spray, and tried to go to sleep, but these mosquitoes don't take no for an answer. Eventually I had to wrap a towel around my head with a little slit to breathe out of. Finally I could get some rest!
The
Mt Kinabalu
Picture from where we started our trek. next morning, we started our trek to the base camp. It was a long trek uphill in thin air, but we made it on time to have a few hours of rest before dinner. After dinner we tried to go to bed at around 9pm because we were to get up at 2:30am the next morning. The reason for this was so we could reach the summit by sunrise. I tried to fall asleep for 4.5 Hrs, and slept for 1 Hr. When I woke up at stupid O'Clock I felt absolutley fantastic! The only thing missing was 7 hours more sleep! I cooked up a quick breakfast of mr. noodles and beef spam and hit the summit trail with a flashlight and some huge bags under my eyes.
All of the weather here in Malaysia has been great, usually above 30C on the beaches. Mt. Kinabalu is no beach. The temp is just above zero which keeps snow and ice off of the mountain, but 2C and a cold rainy wind is pretty damn freezing when you are used to being a beach bum!
We made it up to the summit at 5am - 1 hr ahead
Mt Kinabalu
Climbing up to the summit at about 3am. of schedule. The walk was pretty tough in the cold, dark, thin air. We really wanted to see the sunrise, but the peak was super COLD. We decided to wait an hour until sunrise, so we found a nice little shelter between two big boulders. After hunching over and shivering for 45 mins, we jumped up, snapped a ton of photos, and made our way down. The scenery was amazing. The mountain was made of huge slabs and fields of granite, with giant oddly shaped rocks all around us.
We lugged a couple beers to enjoy at the summit, but really had no idea how cold we were would be. We brought them out about halfway down to the base camp where the terrain/weather was a little easier to deal with and enjoyed a nice cold beer.
I made the descent all the way to the bottom by the early afternoon. It was very tough on the knees, especially with only an hour of sleep. When we arrived at the bottom, we jumped on the first bus possible to the hot springs. We were expecting a nice big pool with hot sulphur water, but I forgot that I
Mt Kinabalu
View from Summit was still in SE Asia and things are never as you think they'll be. There were about 20 different bathtubs outside in a little jungle area, and we had to fill up a tub with minimal water pressure and leaky drain plugs. After about an hour and a half of fussing around with ways to fill up my tub, I managed to make a bath about 12 inches deep!! By this time I was warm again, so I did a little splash around and tried to forget that the whole experience (or lack of) happened.
The next day we went to visit a friendly girl named Jackie. She was quite crazy! When I called her over, she ran over full of curiousity. When I brought my camera out she started to pose for us in all sorts of ways. She was a bit hairy, but very cute! Take a look at the pictures!
Once again, I am having pretty good luck with my computer. I have 3 ants tugging a dead fly across my space bar at the moment, a giant flying cockroach that landed on my arm moments ago, an ant crawling across my screen, and a
Mt Kinabalu
Granite rock-face on the way up. It almost looks like the moon! friendly little beetle that keeps coming to say hi after I flick him across the table. These wildlife keyboards seem to be a re-occurring theme! I'm guessing that a big bright monitor with no window blocking it from the jungle could be the problem...I'm going to cut things off here and hope for a better habitat to type in next time!
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Nathan
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Lucky Guy
Hey it's Nathan.Your father told me of this blog and so I checked it out. WoW! I am so jealous of you. I will talk to you soon and I will visit over the holidays.