Winnie's space

Mount Kinabalu... a tremendously exhausting trip.

On Thursday, 12 June 08, Dao & I took the 9.30am flight to KK. He was all geared up and bubbling with excitement, where else I was feeling sick in the stomach and thinking - “Am I really gonna have to climb that tall mountain”.

Nether less, we still had to get onto the flight, and get our butt to KK. We spent another hour or 2 at the KK Airport while waiting for the shuttle bus, before being transferred to Mesilau…the foot of Mt KK. There’s about 50+ of us from company, and the bus journey up to Mesilau took about 2-3 hours (if I remembered correctly). The bus-ride and the location of Mesilau, reminded me a lot of Cameron highlands. Being on the hill, chilly and windy. It was a wet journey, when we arrive it was already dark and wet with rain..what a great start!

Checked into our chalets and headed over for our dinner. Cold windy evening…

After dinner, it’s lepak lepak around and off for an early night rest…

Friday, 13 June 08..

Woke up extremely early at 6am for breakfast, group briefing and start off our hike up to Laban Rata at about 8am… We passed our bags to porters who charged RM8 per/kg. How I wish I could afford to pay them to carry me up too.

Our route from Mesilau up to Laban Rata is a lonnngggggg route..but with beautiful scenery along the way. We tracked the never ending route…and the only thing on my mind was “when will I ever arrive”… Really amazed with the porters carrying about 30-40kg behind their back, and yet they walked up the mountain as if they are weightless. Morning hike was quite pleasant…but after lunch about 1pm, I felt my energy was draining and really felt like I was walking on Cloud 9. Not only that, it started raining… Wet, cold, tired and hungry, I thought I was gonna die on the mountain.

Anyway, made it up the mountain, and by then it was already DARK! 7pm++.. Abit regret why I didn’t walk faster earlier during the hike.. I was walking slowly and enjoying the view, lepaking…

It was a quick dinner that night, then off to bed early about 9pm+. Rest only for the 3 hours, then got woken up again at 12am+ to start our next hike up to the peak at 1am. This was the horrible part…already with aching legs, had to drag myself out of my warm bed, into the dark, cold wet weather outside in the middle of the night, when it’s bedtime for everyone. Popped a panadol, rubbed loads of Deep Heat, pull on my Windbreaker, I stood outside of Laban Rata waiting to start the last hike up, determined to catch the Sun Rise.

Saturday, 14 June 08..

The 1^st part of the hike was a lot of steps, stones along the mountain. Towards the top, it’s basicly, dangling yrself at the side of the clift, pulling yrself over to the other side of the mountain. It was dark, cold and slippery.. A very very dangerous stunt… Imagine there’s only like 1 inch of foot space for yr feet, and when u look down, u see dots of lights like the highway.. one slip of foot, down the mountain u go.

The last final few steps was very challenging…it’s very steep, slippery and almost every 10-20 steps up the hill leaves me breathless, gasping for air. That’s when I bumped into Dao again, and that’s when I decide that it doesn’t really matter if I make it up for Sun Rise or not. I’m feeling very comfortable resting on the rock, and what matters most is that I enjoy myself.. hahaha

So there we were, sitting about 100m beneath the final climb up to the Peak, waiting for the sky to brighten up. Looking at all the ppl still beneath the mountain far far away, and looking at those who already passed us to make the final hike.

The view was spectacular up there… The sense of achievement is still there…that I made it up. Snap Snap pictures, then we headed back down, walking slowly as both my toes is already killing me. By the time we arrived back at Laban Rata it’s 10.30am, and 11am we continued our climb back down to Sipilok (I think)..towards the other route, not the Mesilau route which we took earlier.

Aching toes, we arrived back down at KK Park again about 7pm for dinner. After dinner transferred over to the KK town to the apartment there.

Now

When we got back to KL, was feeling feverish for the next few days, must be the rain we got at the mountain. Not only that, my 2 blue-black toes…soooo black!

Mt KK again?? Nehhhh..once is enough.