Based in the town of Kota Kinabalu, I met up with a Finnish guy and planned three days of trekking in the Malaysian mountains on the mainland called Borneo in the Sabah region. Jouni and I warmed up with a day-walk east of Mt. Kinabalu on elevated canopy bridges, to a waterfall, bat caves, and around hot springs. We set out the next morning at 7:30am to ascend 4500 vertical feet along a staggeringly slow, steep, and at times rainy 3.75 mile path to base camp. The next morning arrived briskly at 2am and we set out for the summit.
Wearing board shorts and a long sleeve synthetic shirt I whisked up the remaining 2600 vertical feet along 1.7 miles of craggy path through the thin and frozen mountain breeze, at steeper times negotiating a fixed rope. My team successfully summited at 5:20am then proceeded to wait for the sunrise. Exposed to 360 degrees of bone-chilling wind, the summit manages to suck away any unprotected body heat. At this point I armed my upper body with a heavy fleece and goretex wind/rain jacket though my bare-skin legs would miss out on the comfort and later hold a grudge.The sun never did rise, as funny as that sounds. Rain clouds blocked the 6am view and the fact that they were rain clouds alerted our guide that it was time to get DOWN. With a quick breakfast stop at base camp we spent the next 6.5 hours compacting our joints down a steep and river-esque trail as we abandoned the 7100 feet gained in the past day. Overall, summiting southeast Asia's rooftop was, for lack of better words, awesome.
1 comment:
I hate it when sunrises and sunsets don't cooperate especially at once in a lifetime places...;-( Fortunately there is usually enough other beauty at places like these to somewhat compensate...;-)
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