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Mount Kinabalu 061
The destination... Don't believe the travel agencies that tell you that you must have booked 6 months in advance to climb Mt. Kinabalu, we did it in just a few days. The key is to book your overpriced accommodation with Sutera Sanctuary Lodges (the company that has the monopoly on accommodation on the mountain) directly. Everything else can be arranged the morning of your hike at the Park HQ. Our good friend Laura who we were happy to be hangin around with because of her witty demeanor who went well with our smart alec comments laid out the pros and cons of climbing the mountain. Eventually I caved. Mazi held the fort at Rose Cabins and enjoyed the surroundings at base camp. She joined some interpretive hikes at the Park HQ and chatted with some fellow travellers.
She took care to avoid snobby travellers who over-react and gang up on unsuspecting people though. Some guy flipped out at Laura the night before our hike, after Mazi and I had asked at reception why we were just told that the internet wasn't available when they let someone else use it five minutes later. We were in a bind because we had unknowingly double
Mount Kinabalu
Fresh and Pumped! booked ourselves between hiking the mountain and diving at Sipadan because there was only two busses a day that made the 10 hour trip to Semporna and we were going to miss them if I climbed the mountain. Anyways, when we asked if the staff could make it up to us by looking up the website on their computer (which wasn't in use by anybody but was behind the staff counter) they refused. Anyway, the person on the computer figured we were upset that he was taking too long or something, flipped us the bird behind our back, and when Laura confronted him and tried to explain that we weren't directing our frustration at him, he jumped up in a hostile manner as if the two were gunna brawl. This was the first time any of us have felt threatened on our trips! Geez! Later when we tried again to use the sole computer we waited patiently while a gang of this guys friends took their turns holding it up. In the end Mazi managed to convince the staff that we just needed to quickly visit the website on their computer and they allowed us. Don't expect customer service at
this guesthouse unless you beg. Later, Laura again tried to explain to the guy but he wasn't interested neither were we. I'd guess the 'baby' was close to 30 years of age and married. Come on!
Anyways on to the fun stuff...
Actually I hadn't decided to climb until the morning of, because of the double booking but I managed to get a hold of the dive company that morning and they said I could change my dive at Mabul on day 1 but not Sipadan on day 2 because of the permit. But this worked out because we were able to cancel diving Mabul on day 1 and change it to day 3, the day after Sipadan. This gave us an extra day to make the journey.
Laura and I walked up to the Park HQ and got all the registration taken care of and picked up our box lunches. We met up with a single hiker Nick, one of Laura's countrymen from England. We met our guide, a young local, who led us to our van that took us to the trail head. With poles in hand we head off up the mountain. First we
stopped for a ceremonial picture by the waterfall. We climbed together for the first half an hour at a steady pace and then stopped for a breather and a drink. I was feeling great and needing to vent some frustration (I think) so I didn't waste any time and headed off ahead without breaking much except to get a few snapshots along the way. I stopped at the 4k mark to have lunch and wait for the others who arrived shortly after.
The trail is really well marked and most of the steep sections have stairs. It was wet and slippery though but not too muddy up to the 4k mark and then dried off as we got higher. The forest changed significantly from jungle to thinner and less dense alpine forest as we got up to 3000m. We past a cool carnivorous pitcher plant along the way too.
To Laura's credit, she had an awful exhaust burn that wasn't healing and sores on her feet that were going gang-green it seemed. Our new friend from England nick led us, panting up the last 2k to the on-mountain accommodation. While he got a nice warm room in the
main building Laura and I had to head up to the dorms 10 minutes further up the mountain. The rooms weren't heated but the showers were, thankfully.
The trek was quite costly at about 120 CAD each but it was well done. The trail up to this point was a tough grind but not technical. When we arrived tea and coffee was served and the buffet dinners although a bit monotonous by the end were pretty tasty and all-you-can-eat. So we had plenty of fuel to climb on. We spent the afternoon playing scrabble which I creamed everybody, hahahah, and Laura cleaned up in Monopoly, boo!
We turned in at around 8:00 and the dorm beds had great warm blankets.
Up an at'em at 1:45 was a drag but we stumbled down to the main lodge for some hot tea and pre-climb eats. We headed out at 3:00am up the mountain. It was dark and there was a weird glow from the trail of white-blue LED headlamps. It was slow going, up the narrow trail but after we passed a big group we could get a close up view of the stars. Eventually, we came to the
mountain customs checkpoint where we had to verify our registration. We passed and headed up a long smooth slope of granite with a long white rope we could hold on to if necessary. Our guide cautioned us to go slowly so we took plenty of rests to avoid waiting at the top in the freezing cold.
Eventually, we made it to the last short scramble to the summit where many people had already found perches to watch the sunrise. I managed to get separated from Laura and Nick and went around to a different spot to avoid the mass. The sunrise was beautiful and as the sun came up the view was fantastic. We could see out to the ocean and all the way back to KK. It was bitterly cold though and we really didn't have the cold weather gear we would have liked. Nick was brave in a t-shirt! After about an hour, everyone was frozen so we made our way back down to the lodge for breakfast. I was ready to eat again!!
We sauntered down the granite slope snapping pictures of the impressive ridges and summits and of the valleys below. We made it
Mount Kinabalu
very sweaty a third of the way to the lodge down in a short time and filled up again. Soon after we headed down to HQ, it was still early, we left around 8:00am. We were exhausted and the hiking down was slow but we got another buffet meal at the bottom at around noon.
From here we met up with Mazi and caught a cab back to KK where we ate dinner together and said goodbye to our friend Laura who we had now been with for 9 days.
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kerbau1
Tristan
Dead Wrong!
Sorry mate but don't give people false hopes and claim you don't need to book accomodations 6 months in advance. There is a shortage of beds up at laban rata and the other huts there and given the number of tour companies and tourist who do frequent mt kinabalu these days, assuming there are beds and trying to get beds sorted out at the last minute is generally doomed to failure. You may have been lucky on your trip but advising people that its easy to do is total BS... As for the "over priced" cost to climb the mountain, how much is it in EURO or USD to climb south east asia's highest mountain as a comparison to other peaks in those "1st world" countries? Get real!