Ouch

We just got back from climbing Mt. Kinabalu. It was an amazing experience, but definitely one of the most difficult things that I have ever done. Six of us started out together, only five of us made it the first kilometer, only four of us made it to the second km., and the four of us proceeded to make it to the top (and back...which was definitely half the battle!) The climb was 8700m. (one way, so 17,400m in total), 99% uphill (on the way up obviously), and it was HARD! (The mountain itself is over 4000m high, and is the highest in South East Asia) There were numerous times when we thought that there was no way that we could make it, but we did it!

On the first day, you climb 6km., uphill most of the way over rocks and rickety stairs. We started to climb around 10:30am and reached the hostel at 4pm (There were many times that I was positive that I was not going to reach that hostel!). We ate supper, watched the gorgeous sunset, and basically went to bed because the next day, we woke up at 2am in order to start climbing again at 2:30!!! That's right, 2:30 in the morning! The climb started with a grueling 300 or so steps up the mountain...definitely not an easy start which had us all huffing and puffing. We climbed another 2700m to reach the summit by sunrise. This was a really difficult climb because it was pitch black and we had to scale a lot of rock using ropes that were bolted to the rocks (no harnesses or anything, just free climb). We had to do this while holding our flashlight so that we could see where we were going, so it was quite difficult.

I did stop a number of times just to look up at the stars though. It was amazing. We were so high up and the sky was completely clear (which apparently is rare, so we were quite lucky). I think that I saw every single star that is in the sky, it was incredible. This last part of the climb was definitely the hardest (our guide pretty much dragged one of my friends up the hill because she was having trouble...seriously, he held her hand from the 6.5 km mark on, I got some pictures, it was really cute).

We reached the summit at 5:30 am., just in time to watch the sunrise, which was completely worth it. Actually, one of my friends reached the summit before us and was the fourth person to arrive, the first female, we were very proud of her. We thought that we had been climbing very slowly, but when we arrived, there were only about 13 or 14 other people there (there were at least 70-80 doing the climb), so we were really happy with that. The colours of the sunrise were amazing, I can honestly say that I have never witnessed a sunrise quite like that!

We spent about half an hour on the peak before starting our descent back to the hostel. This was one of our favourite parts of the climb because, first of all, it wasn't uphill!!!! It was also amazing to see what we had climbed in the dark. We had scaled some really steep rock and actually scaled along a really steep cliff using only ropes...I think I preferred doing that one in the dark! I took a lot of pictures as we were going back, just to show how steep it was, but they don't do it justice at all!

We went back to the hostel where we ate breakfast and then started climbing down the mountain. This was definitely not the easy part of the climb. It was great at first, but then different muscles and joints (particularly calves, quads, ankles, and knees) really started to hurt (a nice change from the thigh and butt muscles though!). By the end of the climb we were actually stumbling because we could barely support ourselves, our legs were SO sore, we looked ridiculous! It only took us 3 1/2 hours to descend, which we were happy with.

We then paid (probably) a ridiculous amount to get back to our hostel in Kota Kinabalu partly because we didn't want to wait for the bus, but also because taking the bus meant that we would have to go down a steep hill, and none of us were up for that.

Now we are back, showered and tiger balmed, and still in a daze about the fact that we just climbed a mountain! We are tired and sore, but really happy that we accomplished this! It was definitely the highlight of the trip, and something that we will all remember forever! I will post pictures when I get back to Bangkok but, as I said, they really don't do it justice AT ALL!