Climbing Mount Kinabalu

Left on Dragon Air's first morning flight bright and early for Kota Kinabalu on the 27th of December. Barely had much sleep from the night before but caught that up on the plane and waiting for my girl friend Janice to arrive from Singapore. By 2:30pm we were comfortably situated, having lunch by the pool of the Sutera Pacific Resort. Originally planned to drive to stay at one of Kinabalus Park lodges after dinner. But my bad, instead of waiting just half an hour for our driver, I asked for a different one to leave earlier and to keep a long story short, winded up checking into the Resort for the night. (Which actually turned out for the better :P)

We woke up at 6am and had a five minute breakfast before our 2 hour drive to the park entrance.

Hired Tommy our guide for the next couple of days and set off at 9:30am from other side of the mountain, taking the Mesilau route which is 1km longer.

The lunch box wasn't spectacular so we were both famished by the time we arrived at base camp at 3pm. Mmmmm the hot chocolate couldn't have been any tastier during our wait for dinner. Dinner only started at 5pm so we checked into our lovely Waras Hut, took a lot of pictures of the setting sun beforehand.

By 7pm we slipped into our thermals, snuggled up in our bunk-bed and called it a night.

Was luckily able to sleep a bit, which I unfortunately can't say the same for Janice who hadn't one wink. But both up at 1:45am we prepared for our final ascent to the summit with everyone at 2:30am after supper.

Can't begin to describe the adrenaline rush I got, climbing up in such conditions. After escalating thousands of wooden planked stairs, and boulders of rocks we reached a short narrow ledge. That was the beginning of the rope climbing section, and without any harness, we gripped on and made it onwards to the top. I took about six 5-10 min breaks as the air thinned the higher i got to summit. Each time looking up with such admiration at the millions of stars illuminated the  the sky above us.

5:30am reached Mt Kinabalu summit 4095.2M in altitude.

The rest well...was such a natural high!!!

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PEACE