Hiking up Borneo's highest peak, Mount Kinabalu

After hiking Fujisan (to read about my experience, link here!), it'd be silly if I didn't conquer the highest peak back at home. So here's a post about Mount Kinabalu, dated back in October 2018. Took me a while to get around in jotting this piece of memory down.

Towering at 4,095 meters, it wasn't easy at all to complete that 8.72km for the peak. Unless you're crazy fit, casual hikers take an average of 2 days to scale Mount K.

Based on 2017 climbathon result (oh yes, there's an annual thing where people race up and down Mount K), the fastest runner was a Malaysian, Safrey Sumping, who managed to complete it within 2 hours 18 minutes. Cray.

By the way, if you were to ask me to compare between Fujisan and Mount K, I'd say their difficulty level is on the same par just very different terrain. Fujisan had plenty of zig-zag paths and had a volcanic terrain. Whereas Mount K had a lot of steps at the beginning surrounded by what you'd usually expect of a tropical rainforest but towards the peak, it turned into a slippery rocky surface that was quite barren. To be honest, I find Mount K's terrain much more interesting!

Day 1. We arrived at the National Park's registration office around 7.30am and had to complete some paperwork. Hung around for a bit while we waited for the green lights from our local guides.

Once that was sorted, they brought us to the trailhead, which was just a short ride away. If you opted for the porter service, this is where they will weigh your bag.

Piece of advice. Get the god damn porter service. I almost died.

The bag you'll be carrying should only consist of:

• Snacks
• Water
• Lightweight jacket/poncho
• Emergency medical supplies
• Cap

Whereas the items you'd consider to get porter service is mainly for your stay at Laban Rata and the summit attack:

• Warm clothing 
• Waterproof windbreaker
• Fleece jacket
• Head torch
• Beanie
• Scarf
• Gloves
• Toiletries
• Slippers (optional)

We started our hike close to 9am and like I've said, the terrain is pretty interesting. You'll get different views along the way.

It was a painful 6 hours before we finally made it to Laban Rata around 2.30pm and thankfully we made it before it started pouring!

Had lunch and killed time playing some card games as we waited for them to confirm on room arrangements.

You'd want to rest early because by 1.30am, we were up and about once more.

Day 2-ish. I was dying but glad that my troop consists of 2 doctors, well equipped with drugs! Thalitha and Amirah gave me some Panadols to kill the migraine, steroids to mask the pain, and some anti-vomits pills.

We started our summit attack maybe around 2.30am-3am-ish and made it to the peak in about 4 hours. Completely missed the sunrise.

It was a bit sad when we realised 2 out of the 6 of us didn't make it to the peak. To be honest, I nearly gave up too. I felt like I could barely breathe. Towards the last 100m perhaps, the guide had to drag me, like literally grabbed my hand and pulled me along. And I'm glad he gave me that extra push.

So here are a few more photos of the beautiful sky to commemorate such a glorious moment.

That feeling being above the cloud is really quite spectacular, don't you think?

As much as I enjoyed the view, we can't stay up there forever.

Descend back to Laban Rata took us about 2 hours. And it was breakfast time!

Meals were included in our accommodation but just in case you're interested in finding out about ala-carte prices.

By 10am-ish, we were on our way back down. And that took about 4.5 hours.

I did the maths. We took a total of 16.5 hours, excluding resting time. I was ecstatic when we finally made it to the "exit". At this point, my legs weren't mine anymore.

Will I do it again? If you asked me back then, I'd give you a solid "hell no". But now, I might actually consider it.

Till then, thank you for the amazing experience.