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13,455 Feet To Sunrise
Mount KInabalu, Malaysia |
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After settling our things up in the room and putting on some extra clothing (it was already very cold there) we went out to have dinner. We figured the food are surely expensive inside the park so went outside, crossed the highway and looked for a diner. Luckily, there was one. We feasted. Malaysian cuisine at its best hahaha. And they have the best fresh lime juice too, yes, with honey. After dinner we went back to Menggilan. Sir Omar and the others were already there too, they went out to have dinner at another place. He gave a briefing about the climb that we will be doing the following day. Laughed the remaining hours off and then it was time to sleep. It was a cold night. |
I woke up with a headache and a tummy aching for a nice Heaven and Eggs breakfast, but i was thousands of mile away from G4 and all i have is my peanut butter packed wheat bread and good ol instant champorado. hehe. It'll have to do, i told myself. I plugged my battery charger as i got out, to be sure i'd get heaps and heaps of pix. I think it was around 6am, everybody was already awake, even the other guests which were mostly westerners. While we waited for the others to gear up, Vilma, Rommel and i went out to take photos. We then took our baggage to the park office, 5 ringgit per bag for an overnight storage. The bus that will take us to Timpohon gate was there in the park office, we boarded it and picked the others up in Menggilan. Sir Omar handed out our ID's for the climb. |
Before we left Menggilan, me and pablo have to run back to the park office to get a "girl thing" for Angel. I considered it a quick warm up, the office being a couple of hundred yards away. We hurried back and jumped into the bus, sweating. Everybody was set. Well at least i thought. Halfway to Timpohon gate, i realized i forgot to get the batteries i was charging that morning in Menggilan. I told Sir Omar about it and he talked to the bus driver if they would be kind enough to give me a ride back to the lodge and hitch me back again to Timpohon gate with their next group of climbers. They said its not gonna be a problem. Pablo accompanied me back to the lodge, Rommel and Yaznin (guide) waited for us in Timpohon while the others moved ahead with Azlan, the other guide. |
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Luckily the charger was still there, still humpin the 3 holed malaysian wall socket. As planned, we hitched back to Timpohon onboard the same bus. The new group they picked up, im guessing brits for their accents and elton john shirts hehe, didn’t look that excited about having two brown dudes hitching on their ride. But let's save that racial thing for another time. Anyways, so we got back to Timpohon. Rommel was still there, busy taking pictures of himself. Yaznin, who was carrying 3 backpacks, was waiting for us on the trail entrance. After showing the guard dude at the trail entrance our ID's, we started on the hike. The first 10 to 15 minutes were just gradual walk on very established trail, passing a lil waterfall. It eventually got steeper as we went along, but it was okay. |
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We caught up with the rest of the guys at kilometer 1, resting and having some chit chats with a dutch couple and their guide. The kinabalu trail has resting sheds with potable water source and tandas (cr) in every kilometer. Up to kilometer 6 only though, km7 being laban rata already and km8 and km9 being on the summit assault portion of the climb. It was really convenient, water is abundant, you can sit down and snack under the sheds or drop a load if ever nature called. After a few minutes we continued on the hike, the trail got steeper as we go up. We arrived at km2 and rested again, a playful squirrel showed up and posed for a few pictures. It was cute, our first time to see a squirrel haha, it looked like a brown sampaloc-manila-boarding-house rat but with bigger eyes and a fancy tail. |
Light lunch at km4. It was around 11am. A group of around 20 koreans caught up with us there, all wearing orange cerro torre shirts complemented with kickass cerro torre hiking gears. I even jokingly asked them if they worked for or sponsored by the company. One of them gave me me-no-speak-no-english shrug. They were very friendly, we even traded our boy bawangs with their funny looking candies. Two more group of foreigners arrived and also had their lunch there. We let them all move ahead of us, we were taking our time, i was busy munching another peanut butter wheat sandwich, the others had rice and pinoy lutong bahays. After more than 30 minutes of staying there, we got up and started the ascend again. |
Minutes before we got to Km7, it started raining, the dark clouds just a lil above us was spitting ice cold water. I felt my gloveless hands were starting to get numb. I had to open and close them continuously to keep them warm. The rain brought tons of worries. I prayed to Jesus, Allah, Buddha, Jah and the rest of the gods for good weather. Wishes and curses. If the rain wouldnt stop until midnight, a summit assault might not be possible. That was my greatest fear for this climb, a bad weather. I tried to shake the thoughts off and continued on the steep trail to Laban Rata. |
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Yaznin, one of our muslim guide, was just behind me. He pointed upward the trail, telling me to look, it was Laban Rata, we were now just some 100 meters away from it. I figured the other guys were already there by that time, probably having an early dinner. I took quick pictures of some of the beautiful floras along the trail and tried to catch up with Vilma and Pablo who were just ahead of me. The rain started to cease. It was a great sign. Mt. Kinabalu's colossal face was now peaking at us trough the dark clouds. |
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Vilma took some videos while we were approaching Laban Rata. I was already thinking about dinner, no more peanut butter sandwich please. I was thinking about 3 orders of steamed rice and one huge helping of beef rendang. But it had to wait, we decided to go to Gunting Lagadan first, the place where we'll be staying at for the night, to put our gears down. We were supposed to stay in Laban Rata but the freaking lodge was fully booked until december. So we had to do with other lodges that doesn’t have heaters to ward off the biting cold. Those lodges are standing well above 11,000 feet, thousands of feet higher than Mt. Pulag or Mt. Apo so you can just imagine how cold it can get there. |
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mt. kinabalu's south peak |
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