We traveled by van from Kota Kinabalu to Kinabalu National Park, the trip took a couple of hours. Our tour guild arranged all the organised our food vouchers, mountain climbing guide and entry tickets.
View of Mt Kinabalu
We checked into the Grace Hostel and visited the Botanical Gardens. We were lucky that we managed to be the only people staying in our room so this gave us some privacy for the first part of the trip. The botanical Gardens were nice but we organised our trip for the dry season as we weren't keen to walk in the afternoon rain and didn't want to risk not being allowed to climb to the peak due to slippery conditions, unfortunately that meant that we didn't get too see too many flowering orchids in the gardens or on the climb.
Orchid at the Botanical Gardens
Back to the hostel where our guide gave us instructions for the rest of our Mt Kinabalu stay before he departed. We decided on a walk to the visitors centre for a wonderful lunch and a quick look around. Back to the hotel for a shower then to the cafe for dinner and to watch the sun set.
Sunset
MondayWe where picked up at 8am and off to the cafe for breakfast and to organise our packed lunch, after breakfast we meet our mountain guide Jermin and headed to the Timpohon gate for the start of the climb, we have 6km by foot and an elevation gain of 1404 m in front of us.
The climb didn't seem that difficult initially as we had done a lot of preparation back in Brisbane. The weather was hot and sticky and most of the time we where in the clouds with limited views.
We saw a lot of ground squirrels (they jump a lot, a few orchids in flower, a lot of orchids not in flower and other plants like Balsams , rhododendron and pitcher plants etc.
The walk was over pretty good track that had a lot of stairs with rest stops and toilets every 1/2 to 1 km.
Lots of Steps
Around the 5.5km mark (around 3000m elelvation) I started getting a bad headache the first signs of altitude sickness, and after 7 hours we finally made it to Laban Ratan which was our overnight accommodation. At this stage I had a really bad headache and wasn't feeling that good, after a snack, coke and Panadol and 30 minutes I started to feel better but still not 100%.
The accommodation was dormitory style 4 people in our room and round 12 rooms in our building, with some rooms holding 6 to 8 people. Due to the dry season water was being rationed so things like the toilets and showers only worked for about 2 hours a day. You had to time your toilet visit right otherwise it was a bit of a mess.Laban Ratan also server as a bar, restaurant and a general place to relax and recover from the climb. The amazing thing is that everything has to be brought up by porters. we saw over 20 porters today taking up everything from gas cylinders, eggs, to beer cans.
For the sunset we went outside and enjoyed the sun setting to the west of the mountain. Dinner was ok and I really enjoyed the ginger beef. We had a 2:30am start the next morning and breakfast was being served at 2am, so off to bed around 7:30pm.
Tuesday "Day from Hell"
We got up around 1:30am to the sound of other walkers making noise and packing their bags. We both didn't get a good nights sleep, but we weren't feeling that bad. Our guide was waiting for us downstairs at 2:30 and we made our way up the mountain 2.7km to go by foot and another 825m of elevation to gain.
Things started well, we were going at a good pace and even overtook some people.
Around halfway up I stated to get altitude sickness again, this time bad nausea. Maria was also getting this but not to the same extent. I really thought I wasn't going to make it but I went about 20 m then would rest and so on for the rest of the climb which was initially lots steps then a roped section to the top.
The temperature was around 2 deg C and it was windy, thankfully we had rugged up. I was now dry reaching every 100 m or so but with the encouragement from Maria and our guide I made it to the top on Lows Peak with an Elevation of 4095.2m.
Summit
The views were great as was the feeling of accomplishment. We spent around 20 mins at the top before the decent. I was still pretty bad at this stage and Maria's also breathing was pretty bad.
It was a slow decent but every 200-300m felt better by the time I reached Laban Ratan I was exhausted and still feeling nauseous but no longer dry reaching I still had a bad headache however. We spent an hour recovering, packing up our gear, and had a quick snack.
Maria at this stage stated having pain in her knees and our guide decided to carry Maria's backpack. Every 500m I felt better but Maria felt worse and every step on the steps/stairs (and their where 100's) killed her, but in the end we made it down around 4pm.
Our bus driver was waiting for us and he quickly (110km an hour in a 90 zone) drove us down the mountain back to the hotel at Kota Kinabalu. We where both pretty sore and decide to eat in at the hotel and have an early night as we had an early flight in the morning.
