Climbing Kinabalu

Trip Start Mar 31, 2010

109

Trip End Mar 31, 2011

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Flag of Malaysia Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia
Saturday, June 12, 2010

We climbed to the top of Kinabalu, which is SE Asia's highest mountain at 4095m. Its a 2 day climb with a night in a mountain hut about 2/3rds of the way up. The first day is a pretty relentless climb fo 4-5 hours, then the second day starts at 3am with a 2-3 hour very steep climb and then an easier climb across a wide open granite bowl to the top from where the sunrise is said to be fantastic. The mountain is in the North-West corner of Borneo and rises up almost directly from the sea, so the view is very impressive.
Sorry there are no photos - because it rained non-stop for 2 days. On day 1 it was drizzle or we were just in cloud, on day 2 it was pouring with rain, windy and cold. We got to the top, shivered for a couple of minutes, then went back down again. We caught a few glimpses of the view, and it was indeed very good, and the climb was enjoyable in an endurance test, gritted teeth kind of way.
The only real problem is that you have to go down from the top to the bottom in one day, and its very steep and slippery, and 3 days on our legs still hurt too much to walk down a flight of stairs!

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