I believe no one knows that I ever conquered Malaysia's epic mountain - Mount Kinabalu. So, I'm gonna blog about it.
It was a really bad experience for me due to unlucky bad weather and my physical condition.
The day before we climb the mountain, we stayed in the chalet.
Outside chalet
In the chalet
With flowers
Windy day
Night romantic view
The next morning after we took our breakfast, we immediately start climbing, we were assigned a mountain guide to escort us throughout the journey.
As soon as I started my walk for half an hour, I began to regret my decision to conquer this beauty.
My body didn't manage to adapt the high pressure enviroment.
The journey
Basically, this is what I saw. I almost fainted.
My view
I carried a big bag with me and that sucks. In the beginning, we can choose to pay RM80 (15kg) for the mountain guide to carry for us or we can carry ourselves.
When I carry the bag for half an hour, the bag became a fucking burden that make me walk like a turtle and barely can move.
I believe my bag is more than 15kg. While I almost fainted, my mountain guide keep scolding me saying what shit that I can't remember because I can hear nothing.
I sat down and rest. After few minutes, everything turned out better and I continue walking.
The unfriendly mountain guide told me that if I can't walk due to cramp or injured, I need to hire medical team to carry me down which would costs me thousands. Something like RM600 per kilometer going up hill or RM300 per kilometer going down hill. Helicopter will costs more than ten thousands. Lol.
That time, I think I already walked 3km and left 3km to Laban Rata where we rest for the next final climb. Then, I keep motivate myself that "YOU MUST CLIMB TO LABAN RATA OR YOU NEED TO PAY THOUSANDS FOR THEM TO CARRY YOU!".
The mountain guide saw my unstable condition and thus offer me RM50 to help me carry my beg to Laban Rata but I needs to carry it myself during going down. I accepted, have to.
Without the bag, it's helping but the climbing is suffering.
Rocks.
If you expect amazing view of the mountain as I expected, you will be disappointed.
Rocks.
The path is full of nothing but rocks.
Rocks.
While we almost reach the hostel, the sky start to pouring rain.
Mountain guide's epic raincoat
Another sucky thing of me is I bought a cheap Guardian raincoat. I wear it to climb to Laban Rata.
Finally, it took me total 6 hours to climb to here.
Sweet heaven
At laban rata, we eat, bath and rest to ready our climb to low peak on 1am.
The bathing experience here wasn't great. They don't have heater due to power consumption issue.
I needs to bath because I'm sweaty, even the weather is freezing cold, I was sweating too.
In the shower, I stared at the water sprinkle from the shower head and decide want or not to bath
.
I finally man up and jump into the water.
One second after that, I jumped out like HOLY FUCKING COW, this water is fucking icy freezing cold. The feeling is like how u accidentally twist the heat to the max during ur shower with heater.
As I rub away the water with towel, my skin felt like want to peel off. Bathing using the cold water is not a good idea.
There's more stories to tell but I'll skip to the next climb.
On 12am, we woke up and ate breakfast and prepared to climb.
We started climbing on 1am and it took approximately 4-5 hours to reach low peak.
The day still very dark, but the starting point we can already see the amazing view under the mountain.
In the middle of walking, the weather start to rain again.
I wore my Guardian raincoat again to prevent myself getting shitty wet.
This motherfucker raincoat broke because of the strong wind and flew away. It fucking flew away. Fuck.
Imagine you need to climb 2 more hours, the rain never show the sign to stop. There's nothing on me was dry. My iphone was wrapped in plastic bag to prevent any damage.
Upon arrive at low peak in a wet body, I climb to the peak, stood for 5 seconds, and immediately go down.
I see nothing but fog, fog, fog. Oh, man. The mountain guide asked me whether want to take photo or not, I answered no. Totally no mood plus I didn't want to spoil my iPhone due to heavy raining. That's why I have zero photos for my low peak climbing.
And that's why I bought Nikon AW100 after I came back.
After we go down to Laban Rata, we packed and climbing down again. With my heavy bag and my injured toenails due to fucking shoes, it took me 6 hours to climb down.
This was how my toenail look like after I went home. It peeled off after two weeks.
A series of unfortunate for this trip concluded the tips below for your guys. However, I still successfully conquer the beauty, proud of myself! *pat pat on my back*
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Pro tips to climb mount KK:
1. Train, train, train. I thought 1 monts regular training on treadmill is sufficient. It's far more than sufficient. Train more!
2. Buy a proper shoes, try it in your local mountain to ensure the shoes really fit your feet. You don't want your beautiful toes look like mine.
3. Prepare enough medicine especially panadol to cure your muscle pain for the low peak climb during the rest at Laban Rata.
4. Pray for good weather. My climbing month - May which usually is not raining season.You know what? After the two days of raining during our climb, the next few weeks totally no raining. What a luck!
5. Pay for someone to carry your bag! It's only RM80 for 15kg! Don't carry it yourself! My knees still injured as the consequence.
6. Go in a group, it will be more fun.
7. Bring a quality raincoat. Never use fucking cheap raincoat. Never!
-closedown-
