I suppose I should write a post about my experience about climbing Mt. Kinabalu, but there’s already so much information out there about it that there’s little of value that I can add. We did what is by now the standard three day two night package, staying overnight on Tuesday evening at the National Park HQ and starting out from Timpohon gate for the trek to Laban Rata at about 8:20 AM.

My wife and I did better than average on this part of the trip, arriving at about 12:40 PM. One guy we saw however managed to arrive at about 10:30 AM. The rest of our group arrived at about 2:30 PM which is about the average I think. Shan’s mother insisted that we use a porter so that helped us to be faster as we only had to carry our food and water but it also created a problem for us as the porter stayed behind with the rest of them while we raced ahead, so we had no warm clothes to wear at Laban Rata and had to snuggle under the blankets while waiting for our luggage to arrive.

We woke up at 1:30 AM the next day and since we had booked a room at Gunting Lagadan, this normally meant that we would need to climb down from there to Laban Rata to have supper / early breakfast before starting the summit climb and then back up again. No one wanted to do this, so we just had our guide bring us some food from the restaurant instead. The night climb was tougher than I expected but we did good time anyway, arriving near the peak at just a little past 5 AM. The problem then was that we had to wait around for quite a while for our turn to take photos there and I was getting really cold.

The climb back down was the really hard part for us. Getting back to Laban Rata was tiring but tolerable. But getting back to Timpohon was absolutely torturous. My toes were killing me the entire time, I was running a slight fever, perhaps due to exposure to some light rain on the first day and I had a headache that may or may not be related to altitude sickness. Plus right after I got back I fell sick and according to my wife slept for close to 36 hours. The doctor also diagnosed food poisoning, which must have been caused by something in the last lunch at the park included in the package. That was enough to sour me of the whole experience.

Some additional thoughts on the experience in no particular order:

• Climbing during the dry season as we did is definitely recommended. My wife’s eldest brother tried climbing late last year and had constant rain the whole time, making it impossible to reach the summit. Both visibility and slipperiness are important factors to determining success. On the downside, we had no water at the park headquarters.
• The final section of the climb calls for friction-based grips. In most places, the rock is rough enough and the slope shallow enough that you can basically just walk on it slowly. It does get tiring and puts a lot of strain on your ankles going up and your knees and toes going down, but it beats using the rope. This is completely different from our previous experience of climbing the Pinnacles. There we quickly learned not to rely on friction-based grips as everything is slippery and to use only solid handholds and footholds. There are basically no footholds in the rock on Mount Kinabalu, so it’s just rubber on granite. Lesson: bring appropriate shoes.
• Overall, I still find the Pinnacles to be the more grueling experience. It’s far more intensive and stressful as you need to keep to a very strict schedule. Mt. Kinabalu is more like a leisurely walk in which you get to stop as often and for as long as you want to rest. The problem with Mt. Kinabalu is just that it goes on and on for such a long way. With the Pinnacles, whether you succeed or not, at least it’s over relatively quickly.
• We were pretty lucky that we didn’t have any rain at all during the summit ascent and were able to see the sunrise. Apparently, it’s quite common to have rain or fog obscuring visibility up there or strong winds making it even colder it than usually is. This means that our success was just as much about luck as about physical fitness.
• The scenery up there is definitely otherworldly and makes it worth to visit at least once. It’s especially striking because you climb up there in the dark and can’t see anything but then the sun comes out and you can suddenly see the whole landscape around you with other climbers as small as ants on the horizon. The scenery during the first part of the climb really isn’t that special and the climb itself is really kind of boring. It’s arduous but nothing really technical or interesting for the most part. I don’t know why so many people like to make climbing Mt. Kinabalu a regular activity. I personally would prefer to climb different mountains if I had the choice.

Anyway, my wife is already talking about going back up there in May using the longer and even more exhausting Mersilau route to accompany her eldest brother. I’m not terribly enthusiastic because I’m not keen on getting sick again that soon but its unlikely that we’d be able to get a booking with so little time left. This means that unless we want to climb during the rainy season, we’re going to have to wait until next year to climb, which is just fine by me.