At this point we were 10 hours into our 14 hour second day on Mt Kinabalu, Sabah, Borneo. Susie was pretty much running on empty by this stage, but just gave a big sigh, sucked it up, and kept going. I was pretty proud of her.
The catalyst for this little jaunt had been an invitation early in the year from my long time mate Cath Stephens, who would be turning 50 in October, to "do something different" with her to celebrate her big milestone. She was organising a trip to Sabah, Borneo, with the main aim being to climb 4095m Mt Kinabalu. I had been keen to do it for years, but never got around to it, so after a quick conference with Susie who said "Yeah, why not?", I said yep, we're in.
So we flew into Kota Kinabalu on the evening of Oct 11, got up before the sparrows next morning for a quick breakfast, and the 8 of us were piled into a couple of vehicles and driven 2 hours up into the mountains to the start of our adventure, Timpohon Gate, at 1866m. After checking in at Park Headquarters and getting our climb authorisations, we set off at a bit before 10am for the day's destination - Laban Rata, a guest house at about 3200m.
Our group of 8 plus 2 guides fairly quickly became 3 groups with Cath, Scott, Mark and Mick leading the way, followed by Sue and Lisa, with Susie and me bringing up the rear. This part of the climb is mostly in quite dense forest, steep and rough, with big step ups. There are a number of Pondoks, or shelters along the way at roughly every kilometre, which are increasingly anticipated as you get higher and the air gets a little thinner! We all arrived, tired but exhilarated at Laban Rata at various times between 4 and 5 pm.
Dinner was served at 5:30, and we were all in bed by 7 - 7:30 with alarms set for a 2am get up.
There were 8 of us in bunks all in the one room, but I don't think it hindered our sleep too much. Not mine, anyway!
At 2 we were up, got dressed with a few more layers for the cold of the summit, had a light breakfast and were out the door at 2:40 headed for the summit, hopefully by sunrise.
Thinner scrub quickly gave way to just bare rock - mostly walkable except for a few bits where there were ropes in place to pull yourself up. We climbed initially with head torches until the gradually increasing light from the east allowed us to go without. Occasionally I looked back down the mountain to see a winding line of little lights coming up behind me. Our little pools of personal light gradually gave way to tremendous views as we looked down and across acres of granite to a carpet of cloud way below. Climbing on in the beautiful soft light of early morning, Susie and I reached the summit about a half hour after our younger cohorts, at around sunrise (The sun was up, but still below the cloud on the horizon).
It was cold at the top once we stopped moving, so after the mandatory summit shots and 20 minutes or so admiring the view, we started back down to Laban Rata, getting in at 9 for a large breakfast.
By 10 we were on our way again, with 6kms and around 1400 vertical metres of descent to go.
The steps became bigger, our legs became more tired, and the time to cover each kilometre increased!
And so we came to the site of Susie's question. As we continued on, Richard told us about the Guides' method of getting people off the mountain who just give up and won't go any further. The Human Taxi! A half dozen of them come up and take it in turns to piggyback said tourist down the mountain. The cost is 350 Ringits (about AU$128) per kilometre, rising to 500 Ringits if the punter weighs more than 90kgs!
Susie and I walked through the Timpohon Gate at 5:10, had our names ticked off by the Ranger, and had hugs all round with our fellow climbers.
We did some other pretty cool stuff in Sabah - visited Poring Hot Springs, flew to Sandakan and saw the Orangutan Sanctuary, the memorial park on the site of the infamous POW Camp just out of Sandakan, Turtle Island where rangers are in a battle to save the endangered Green Turtle, and 3 days at a you beaut 5 star resort on the beach where we just hung out, swam, ate and drank.
But the mountain was the main goal. It was hard work, and it took us a good 3 days afterwards before we could walk down stairs, or even a gentle slope, without wincing.
Was it worth it? Hell yeah!
