After a very early flight from K.L. to K.K. (Kota Kinabalu) we managed to quickly organize a climbing tour of Mt. Kinabalu as well as a river tour to see Proboscis Monkeys.
We spent a quiet New Year's day having Dim Sum and then having a evening drink before going to bed early in anticipation of our long day on the mountain the next day. We got to the trail head, got registered, assigned a guide and began hiking by 10:30 am.
The trail starts at ~6500' is ~7000' long and has an average grade of ~25%. Having spent the last three weeks mostly at sea level, hiking felt like a lot of work from the start. We arrived at the Laban Rata rest house around 3:00pm and did indeed rest but only to get up at 2:00am for a 2:45am start.
We then continued our agony for the next three hours until we reached the top of Low's Peak (4100m=13,455') just before 6:00am. This is supposed to be when hikers are rewarded a glorious sunrise from high above but it was unfortunately raining and very socked in when we were there. So we left the rats to the other hikers and headed back down to Laban Rata for a second breakfast. All this before 9:00 am and the day wasn't near over yet!
At 10:00 am we started out on the return journey. Around half way down our (o.k. mosly Duane's) leg muscles decided they were done so we slowly wobbled our way down the rocky creek bed and stair cases to the bottom.
We spent that night and the next in a little hotel near the park resting our weary selves. We did however sneak in a trip to the town of Poring to soak in the natural hot springs and to try out their rain forest canapy walk.
From Sabah we fly to Bali on the 6th where we will do lots of swimming and beach dwelling but no hiking and no running from Tsunamis!
Note: The website will not let us choose 2005. Hence, please check the bottom of the pictures (2004) for the most recent updates.
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